PRICE $8.99 FEB. 8 & 15, 2016

ANNIVERSARY ISSUE FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016

9 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN 35 THE TALK OF THE TOWN George Packer on primaries and partisanship; French doggy bags; Sonia Sotomayor; Ricky Jay; James Surowiecki on the stock market’s oil obsession. PERSONAL HISTORY Elif Batuman 42 Cover Story The head scarf, secularism, and modern Turkey. SHOUTS & MURMURS Hallie Cantor 49 Oicial Agenda for Your Sick Day LETTER FROM MILWAUKEE Matthew Desmond 50 Forced Out Eviction as a way of life. ANNALS OF INSOMNIA Patricia Marx 56 In Search of Forty Winks Tech gizmos designed to put us to sleep. A REPORTER AT LARGE Sam Knight 62 The Bouvier Afair An art-world insider’s controversial methods. REPORT FROM GROZNY Joshua Yaffa 72 Putin’s Dragon Is the ruler of Chechnya out of control? FICTION George Saunders 84 “Mother’s Day” THE CRITICS POP MUSIC Carrie Battan 94 The songwriter and performer Sia. ON TELEVISION Emily Nussbaum 97 “The People vs. O. J. Simpson.” A CRITIC AT LARGE Hilton Als 99 The d.j., producer, and m.c. Madlib. BOOKS James Wood 02 Americans looking for love in Europe. Dan Chiasson 05 The poetry of Frederick Seidel. 06 Briefly Noted POEMS Hagit Grossman 44 “On Friendship” Connie Voisine 80 “Messenger Star” COVER Liniers “Eustace Spreads Out”

DRAWINGS Will McPhail, David Sipress, Zachary Kanin, Sam Gross, P. C. Vey, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Harry Bliss, Tom Cheney, Tom Toro, Barbara Smaller, Michael Maslin, Jason Adam Katzenstein, Liana Finck SPOTS Luci Gutiérrez

CONTRIBUTORS

George Packer (Comment, p. 35), a staf Patricia Marx (“In Search of Forty Winks,” George Saunders (Fiction, p. 84), the writer, is the author of “The Unwind- p. 56) is a staf writer and the author of, author of the story collection “Tenth ing,” which won the 2013 National most recently, “Let’s Be Less Stupid: of December,” recently reissued his Book Award for nonfiction. An Attempt to Maintain My Men- children’s book “The Very Persistent tal Faculties.” Gappers of Frip.” He teaches at Syra- Elif Batuman (“Cover Story,” p. 42) is cuse University. working on her first novel, entitled Sam Knight (“The Bouvier Afair,” p. 62) “The Idiot.” is a journalist living in London. Carrie Battan (Pop Music, p. 94) is a writer living in Brooklyn. Her work Hallie Cantor (Shouts & Murmurs, p. 49) Ian Frazier (The Talk of the Town, p. 37), has appeared in various publications, wrote for the third season of Comedy a longtime contributor to the maga- including the Times Magazine, GQ, Central’s “Inside Amy Schumer.” She zine, has a new book, “Hogs Wild: and the Web site Pitchfork. lives in Brooklyn. Selected Reporting Pieces,” coming out in June. Emily Nussbaum (On Television, p. 97), Matthew Desmond (“Forced Out,” p. 50) the magazine’s television critic, won a is the John L. Loeb Associate Profes- Joshua Yaffa (“Putin’s Dragon,” p. 72) is 2014 National Magazine Award for sor of the Social Sciences at Harvard. a New Yorker contributor based in Mos- columns and commentary. His book “Evicted: Poverty and Profit cow. He is also a New America fellow. in the American City” will be published Hilton Als (A Critic at Large, p. 99), a next month. Connie Voisine (Poem, p. 80) has writ- staf writer and a theatre critic for the ten three books of poems, including magazine, is also an associate profes- James Surowiecki (The Financial Page, “Calle Florista.” sor of writing at Columbia Universi- p. 40) writes a column on economics, ty’s School of the Arts. business, and finance for the magazine. Liniers (Cover) is an Argentinean car- toonist. His children’s book “Written Dan Chiasson (Books, p. 105) teaches Hagit Grossman (Poem, p. 44) lives in and Drawn by Henrietta” and the third at Wellesley College. His poetry col- Tel Aviv. Her poetry collection “Trem- volume of his daily cartoon strip, “Ma- lections include “Where’s the Moon, bling of the City” is due out in En- canudo,” were recently published in There’s the Moon” and, most recently, glish in March. English. “Bicentennial.”

NEWYORKER.COM Everything in the magazine, and more than fifteen original stories a day.

THE FRONT ROW PHOTO BOOTH VIDEO Richard Brody comments on scenes Peter Hessler writes about Davide A dispatch from Twins Days, a from Charles Burnett’s film “To Sleep Monteleone’s photographs of life on festival for twins, held every summer with Anger,” from 1990. the border of Russia and China. in Twinsburg, Ohio.

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4 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016

THE MAIL

MODERNITY AT THE MET tive language, but when I think about “black mirrors” all I see are words that Calvin Tomkins, in his article on the dehumanize children with develop- revitalization of the Metropolitan Mu- mental disabilities, describing them seum’s Department of Modern and like something out of a horror movie. Contemporary Art, mentions the early Amanda Vivian death of Thomas Hess, who had been San Francisco, Calif. hired to run the museum’s collection of contemporary art (“The Met and In his piece, Shapin mentions Bruno the Now,” January 25th). My late hus- Bettelheim, a German child psycholo- band, Thomas Hoving, was the muse- gist who proposed the idea that autism um’s director until the late nineteen- was a response to emotional starvation. seventies. He believed that Hess, who But this controversial theory was not had been the editor of ARTnews and his only contribution to history: Bet- an advocate of the Abstract Expres- telheim, a Holocaust survivor, was one sionists, could bring a fresh empha- of the first people to inform the world sis on contemporary art to the muse- of the functions of Nazi concentra- um’s collection. He also felt that MOMA, tion camps, in the article “Individual since it focussed primarily on modern and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situa- works, was not a true contemporary- tions,” published, in the Journal of Ab- art museum. He thought that the Met, normal and Social Psychology, in 1943. as New York’s historical-art museum, As he saw it, these functions were to should take over MOMA’s contempo- terrify the German populace, train the rary collection, leaving MOMA to focus Gestapo and the S.S. in casual cruelty, on modern art. For Hoving, the con- and study how to most eiciently crush temporary could be illuminated by the human spirit. the historical. Theodor Holm Nelson Nancy Hoving Sausalito, Calif. New York City 1 1 RUG RATS UNDERSTANDING AUTISM Alex Ross, writing about Pierre Boulez, In Steven Shapin’s review of “In a examines the conductor’s legacy (“The Diferent Key,” by John Donvan and Magus,” January 25th). In 1973, I at- Caren Zucker, Shapin writes, “It’s a tended my first Rug Concert, Boulez’s searing experience to have a child who response to the conservatism of the doesn’t talk, who doesn’t want to be New York Philharmonic. He removed touched, who self-harms, who demands the concert-hall seats, filled the hall a regularity and an order that parents with pillows, and situated the orches- can’t supply, whose eyes are not win- tra of-stage. The result felt more like dows to their souls but black mirrors” going to a rock concert than to the (“Seeing the Spectrum,” January 25th). symphony, and inspired a deep connec- I’m autistic and have known many au- tion to some wild and crazy music by tistic kids and adults, and I can testify Purcell, Stravinsky, Webern, and Ravel. that none of us have black mirrors for Jef Bieber eyes. Some people don’t communicate Columbia, Md. through eye gaze, which is presumably what Shapin meant. Many of us don’t
make eye contact because it hurts us. Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, Blind people don’t make eye contact address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to because they cannot see. People with [email protected]. Letters may be edited other disabilities (such as Parkinson’s for length and clarity, and may be published in any medium. We regret that owing to the volume disease) cannot control the motions of of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter their eyes. I know that this is figura- or return letters.

FEBRUARY 3 – 16, 2016 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

“Beauty is truth,” wrote John Keats, and the curators of the Cooper-Hewitt clearly agree: beauty is the theme of its Design Triennial. Don’t expect Grecian urns when the show opens, on Feb. 12. The sixty-three participants champion innovation, from China’s Trace Architecture Office (TAO) to the Israeli jeweller Noa Zilberman, whose gold-plated “wrinkles” nestle in facial creases, to the American Haas Brothers, who teamed up with craftswomen in a South African township to create the beaded bestiary above.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREW B. MYERS taken by singers from the Metropolitan Opera’s young-artist program and Juilliard’s Marcus Insti- tute for Vocal Arts. (Peter Jay Sharp Theatre, Juil- CLASSICAL MUSIC liard School. events.juilliard.edu. Feb. 9 and Feb. 11 1 at 7:30 and Feb. 13 at 2.) bury replaces Diana Damrau in the role of Leïla; American Lyric Theatre Alumni Concert OPERA Antony Walker. (Feb. 4 at 7:30.) • Donizetti’s so- The essential contemporary opera lab, which has called Tudor Queens trilogy returns for its sec- supported the development of works by emerg- Metropolitan Opera ond installment, “Maria Stuarda,” in the David ing composers and librettists for a decade, offers With operas like “La Traviata” getting a sexy, McVicar production. The opera’s most viscerally the second in a series of concerts showcasing for- modernist twist at the Met, Puccini’s steamy thrilling moment comes when Mary, Queen of mer beneficiaries of its program. The centerpiece “Manon Lescaut”—which has been playing at Scots (Sondra Radvanovsky), and Queen Eliza- is a preview of the opera “Breaking the Waves,” a the house for thirty-six years in a rococo-accented beth (Elza van den Heever) lock horns for a blaz- work by Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek—based production that looks decidedly antiquated—was ing fourteen-minute showdown, complete with on the film by Lars von Trier—commissioned by due for an update. Richard Eyre’s new film-noir- coloratura fireworks; Riccardo Frizza. (Feb. 5, Opera Philadelphia. Among the vocalists is the inspired staging features Kristine Opolais, a star Feb. 8, and Feb. 16 at 7:30 and Feb. 11 at 8.) • With captivating soprano Caroline Worra, a star of the in the making, as the opera’s reckless seductress; their parallel plots of jilted lovers left out in the Paul Kellogg era at New York City Opera. (Na- Roberto Alagna, singing his first-ever perfor- cold, the one-act operas “Cavalleria Rusticana,” tional Sawdust, 80 N. 6th St., Brooklyn. national- mances of the role of Des Grieux, is replacing by Pietro Mascagni, and “Pagliacci,” by Ruggero sawdust.org. Feb. 7 at 2:30.) Jonas Kaufmann, who has withdrawn from the Leoncavallo, are a perfect double bill—particu- production. Fabio Luisi conducts. (Feb. 12 and Feb. larly in McVicar’s production, which contrasts the 1 15 at 8.) • The director David McVicar, a purveyor grim fatalism of the former with the dashed opti- ORCHESTRAS AND CHORUSES of conservative but dramatically coherent produc- mism of the latter. The experienced cast includes tions, dominates the schedule this week with three Violeta Urmana, Barbara Frittoli, Yonghoon Lee, New York Philharmonic shows in the running. The first is “Il Trovatore,” Marco Berti, and Ambrogio Maestri in the lead- The conductor Charles Dutoit and the pianist Yuja Verdi’s full-blooded opera of fire, madness, and ing roles; Fabio Luisi. (Liudmyla Monastyrska Wang—a commendable combination of experi- circumstance. Angela Meade, a young Met favor- replaces Urmana on Feb. 13.) (Feb. 6 at 1, Feb. 10 at ence and exuberance—dominate the first of the ite, leads the cast for a final run of performances, 7:30, and Feb. 13 at 8.) (Metropolitan Opera House. Philharmonic’s mid-February programs. Wang joining two respected veterans, Marcello Gior- 212-362-6000.) will be out front in the young Mozart’s Piano dani and Dolora Zajick; Marco Armiliato. (Feb. Concerto No. 9, “Jeunehomme,” a work of en- 3 and Feb. 9 at 7:30, Feb. 6 at 8, and Feb. 13 at 1.) • Met + Juilliard: “La Sonnambula” during lyrical freshness; Dutoit wraps up the con- Penny Woolcock’s gorgeous and smartly updated With its emphasis on beautifully intricate sing- certs with the mature Respighi’s so-called Roman new production of “Les Pêcheurs de Perles” (“The ing, bel-canto opera tends to spotlight singers Trilogy, three extroverted tone poems saturated Pearl Fishers”), a certified hit, marks its final per- and not conductors, so there will be more at- in orchestral color: “Roman Festivals” (which To- formance this month, bolstered by an ace cast—in- tention than usual on the pit when the rising scanini and the Philharmonic world-premièred, in cluding Mariusz Kwiecien (Zurga) and Matthew young maestra Speranza Scappucci leads Belli- 1929), “Fountains of Rome,” and “Pines of Rome.” Polenzani (a magnificent Nadir). Amanda Wood- ni’s wistful, pastel-colored work. All roles are (Feb. 3-4 at 7:30 and Feb. 5-6 at 8.) • Semyon

This summer, the dynamic string quartet Brooklyn Rider’s founding cellist, Eric Jacobsen, will be replaced by Michael Nicolas, a long-admired figure on the New York scene. But the original foursome will still be intact for “The Fiction Issue,” a concert with the composer and singer-songwriter Gabriel

Kahane at Williamsburg’s National Sawdust (Feb. 7) which also features Schubert’s Quartet No. 13 in A Minor (“Rosamunde”). (nationalsawdust.org.) SIMONE MASSONI BY ILLUSTRATION

10 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016

CLASSICAL MUSIC

Bychkov, acclaimed for his recent work with the gram that takes fantasy as its theme. The songs, orchestra, returns for a plum assignment: Mahler’s by Schumann, Schubert, Grieg (“In the Hall Sixth Symphony, a work of towering stature which of the Mountain King”), and Sibelius, among the Philharmonic plays magnificently. (Feb. 11 and others, all have the peculiar sparkle of genius NIGHT LIFE Feb. 16 at 7:30 and Feb. 12-13 at 8.) (David Geffen that can make fairy-tale creatures come to life. Hall. 212-875-5656.) (Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall. 212-247-7800. 1 Feb. 5 at 7:30.) Tōn: “Strauss, Watteau, & Nostalgia” ROCK AND POP The international graduate-training orchestra of Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Bard College, conducted by Leon Botstein, ap- The Society continues its celebration of Bee- Musicians and night-club proprietors lead pears on the Metropolitan Museum’s “Sight and thoven’s immortal string quartets, in the order complicated lives; it’s advisable to check Sound” series in a concert that explores—in per- in which they were composed, with the Op. 59 in advance to confirm engagements. formance and discussion—the gentle links be- quartets, performed by the Miró Quartet (which tween Strauss, whose “Bourgeois Gentilhomme” offered a fresh and bold recording of these Crazy & the Brains Suite is derived from the incidental music he quartets in 2012), and with Op. 74, the “Harp,” On the surface, there isn’t much that’s immedi- wrote for the Molière play, in 1912, and the world Op. 95, the “Serioso,” and Op. 127 in E-Flat Major, ately extraordinary about this local punk outfit. of Watteau, whose painting “The French Come- performed by the Orion String Quartet, veteran Their songs take the form of short, punchy New dians” is part of the Metropolitan’s collection. artists of the Society and admired interpreters of York Dolls tributes, and their only deviation from (Fifth Ave. at 82nd St. 212-570-3949. Feb. 7 at 2.) the composer. (Alice Tully Hall. Feb. 5 at 7:30 and traditional rock instrumentation is the addition Feb. 16 at 7:30.) • Four longtime friends of the So- of Jeffrey Rubin, who hammers on a xylophone The Knights and Gil Shaham ciety—the pianist Anne-Marie McDermott, the and a glockenspiel throughout every number. The conductor Eric Jacobsen leads the dynamic violinist Ida Kafavian, the violist Steven Tenen- Somehow, though, they’ve tapped into a well- Brooklyn chamber orchestra—with a special bom, and the cellist Peter Wiley—sometimes spring of shrewd revellers, and their sets usually guest, the violinist Gil Shaham—in a program come together as the Opus One Piano Quartet. devolve into mutant dance parties, well worth the offering substantial works by Prokofiev (the Vi- For this concert, they devote themselves entirely cover price at this subterranean Greenwich Vil- olin Concerto No. 2 in G Minor) and Beethoven to works from distinguished American compos- lage night spot. (Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St. (the Symphony No. 3, “Eroica”), with a bit of vir- ers: Lowell Liebermann, Steven Stucky (“Rain 212-505-3474. Feb. 6.) tuoso fiddle fun by Sarasate (“Navarra,” with the Shadow”), Marc Neikrug, and Roberto Sierra violinist Colin Jacobsen joining Shaham) in be- (“Fuego de Ángel”). (Kaplan Penthouse, Rose Bldg. The-Dream tween. (BRIC, 647 Fulton St., Brooklyn. bricarts- Feb. 11 at 7:30.) (212-875-5788.) Savvy fans of Terius Nash’s glistening take on media.org. Feb. 13 at 8.) R. & B. and pop have already locked down tickets World Music Institute: L. Subramaniam for his Valentine’s Day engagement. Beyond the Cleveland Orchestra The revered violinist of the Carnatic classical- radio staples he’s released as The-Dream (“Rockin’ Mitsuko Uchida, renowned throughout her ca- music tradition of Southern India performs in That Thang,” “Throw It in the Bag,” “I Luv Your reer for her lucid interpretations of the Mozart Gotham for the first time since 2006 in a con- Girl”), Nash has served as the cunning songwriter piano concertos, collaborates with the paramount cert at the 92nd Street Y. Descended from musi- behind historic pop knockouts such as Beyoncé’s orchestra as soloist and conductor in two of his cal masters, Subramaniam (who has collaborated “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” and Rihanna’s most popular, No. 17 in G Major and No. 25 in with such Western musicians as Yehudi Menuhin “Umbrella”—transcendent singles that became C Major. In between, William Preucil, the en- and George Harrison) is joined by his violinist cultural touchstones. With a stylistic breadth that semble’s concertmaster, will act as leader in an- son, Ambi Subramaniam, and the drummer Ma- stretches to the far edges of classic soul and futur- other Mozart work, the Symphony No. 34 in hesh Krishnamurthy. (Lexington Ave. at 92nd St. ist R. & B., Nash recalls the old masters of pop- C Major. (Carnegie Hall. 212-247-7800. Feb. 14 at 7.) 212-415-5500. Feb. 5 at 8.) ular song who consistently found fresh ways to say “I love you.” This week, “Shawty Is a 10” will 1 “Seeing Music”: Julian Rachlin go over as sweetly as a box of chocolates. (Bow- RECITALS The compelling young violinist, not heard often ery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St. 212-260-4700. Feb. 14.) in these parts, offers the next program in the 92nd New York Festival of Song: “NYFOS Next” Street Y’s current project, a series of concerts Fetty Wap The festival’s mini-series returns, offering some- combining sounds and images. Accompanied by One of last year’s most arresting pop figures ap- thing of a new-music lab on three consecutive the pianist Magda Amara, he performs four Bee- pears in the flesh after dominating airwaves na- Thursdays this month. Fresh off the success of thoven violin sonatas (including the “Kreutzer,” tionwide. After his first hit, “Trap Queen,” it’d be his opera “Dog Days” at the Prototype Festival, Op. 47) within a video and stage installation by easy to write off the native of Paterson, New Jer- the much talked about composer David T. Lit- the artist Clifford Ross, who has long looked to sey, born Willie Maxwell II, as a one-off product tle curates an evening of songs by his friends the power of moving water for inspiration. (Lex- of pop and rap’s musical and commercial homoge- Ted Hearne, Kate Soper, Jeff Myers, and Colin ington Ave. at 92nd St. 212-415-5500. Feb. 6 at 8.) nization, occupying the low-stakes space Flo-Rida Read, centered around a preview of his new opera and Kid Ink enjoy. But Fetty kept coming back: “JFK,” which is headed to the Fort Worth Opera Orlando Consort “Again,” “679,” and the mammoth “My Way” all Festival in April. The festival’s second slot is The famed British male vocal quartet comes to spilled over with inescapable harmonies and catch- taken by the faculty, students, and alumni of the Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall to commemorate phrases that popped up everywhere from fast-food Manhattan School of Music, with a program of the four hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare’s social-media accounts to the Kansas City Royals original music curated by Richard Danielpour and death with a program featuring music by Dun- dugout. Success came speeding, even by the Inter- Susan Botti. (National Opera Center, 330 Seventh stable and Power (among others) that follows net’s standards: his album suffered delays mainly Ave. nyfos.org. Feb. 4 and Feb. 11 at 7.) the lives of members of the English royal fami- to keep up with his prolific songwriting, and his lies whom the Bard immortalized in words. (212- omission from the Grammy’s Best New Artist cat- Mivos Quartet: Steve Reich 247-7800. Feb. 8 at 7:30.) egory was considered a snub by many fans. (Irving In a co-presentation of Bang on a Can and the Plaza, 17 Irving Pl. 212-777-6800. Feb. 9.) Jewish Museum, the outstanding young ensem- Miller Theatre: Vox Luminis ble takes up the minimalist icon’s complete string Columbia University’s early-music series pre- Seu Jorge quartets, including the Holocaust-themed “Dif- sents the esteemed Belgian vocal ensemble in This Brazilian singer, guitarist, and actor grew up ferent Trains” and “WTC 9/11,” for string quar- a program of Lutheran church music from less- as Jorge Mário da Silva in Belford Roxo, a favela tet and tape. (Fifth Ave. at 92nd St. thejewishmu- er-known members of the illustrious Bach fam- outside Rio. After his brother was killed, in 1990, in seum.org. Feb. 4 at 7:30.) ily, including J. S. Bach’s predecessors Johann (his a battle between favelados and the police, Jorge de- motet “Unser Leben ist ein Schatten”), Johann cided to become a musician, a choice that prompted John Brancy and Peter Dugan Michael, and the cousins Johann Christoph and his uncle to kick him out of the house. Despite the The baritone and the pianist ignore the typical Johann Ludwig. The concert culminates in Johann hardship of living on the street, Jorge persisted recital format—with its demand for alternat- Sebastian’s plaintive motet “Jesu meine Freude.” in honing his nascent talents, especially his sup- ing song cycles in English, French, and/or Ger- (Church of St. Mary the Virgin, 145 W. 46th St. 212- ple baritone voice and lyrical nylon-string-guitar man—in favor of a spirited, imaginative pro- 854-7799. Feb. 13 at 8.) playing. His big break came when he was cast as

12 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016

NIGHT LIFE 1

JAZZ AND STANDARDS

Evan Christopher and Ehud Asherie Lovingly cradled by the clarinettist Christo- pher and the pianist Asherie, New Orleans an- thems and prewar standards instantly lose their patina of age and shine anew. An unencumbered duo setting will highlight the beauty of Christo- pher’s tone and the power of Asherie’s mighty left hand. (Mezzrow, 163 W. 10th St. mezzrow.com. Feb. 9.)

Freddy Cole Cole’s latest album may be titled “Singing the Blues,” but this veteran stylist would never will- ingly confine himself to an appointed genre. Get- ting a jump on Valentine’s Day, the impeccable singer and pianist will paint the room in shades of bittersweet romance while exhibiting the ele- gant poise that has made him the gold standard of his trade. (Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Broadway at 60th St. 212-258-9595. Feb. 11-12.)

Kirk Knuffke and Frank Kimbrough Quartet The cornettist Knuffke is no one’s idea of a jazz superstar, but judging from his numerous appear- ances over the past few years his name seems to be on the lips of some of the most engaged musicians in town. His cohort here is the equally creative pianist Kimbrough; the bassist Jay Anderson and the drummer Matt Wilson join them. (Jazz at Ki- tano, 66 Park Ave., at 38th St. 212-885-7119. Feb. 13.)

Pat Martino Trio Martino spent his formative years rolling in the groove with such soul-jazz keyboardists as “Brother” Jack McDuff and Don Patterson. De- cades after establishing himself as a titan of mod- ern jazz guitar, Martino still hasn’t shaken the organ bug; his lean trio includes Pat Bianchi on keys and Carmen Intorre, Jr., on drums. (Jazz Standard, 116 E. 27th St. 212-576-2232. Feb. 3-6.)

Cécile McLorin Salvant With a pinch of eccentricity to add spice to her vivid artistry, Salvant has grabbed the reins in the jazz vocal race. As slyly clever as she is af- fecting, she stocked her 2015 album, “For One to Love,” with well-crafted original tunes and off- After two decades away from the dance floor, the seventy-five-year-old Italian d.j. and disco beat choices like Rodgers and Hammerstein’s pioneer Giorgio Moroder plays a rare live set of classic disco and shimmering pop at Output. “Stepsister’s Lament”—it’s anyone’s guess how her rendition of Burt Bacharach and Hal Da- Knockout Ned in “City of God,” a searing Oscar- back, “Random Access Memories,” and the pro- vid’s dated guide to marital bliss, “Wives and nominated portrait of favela life that was followed ducers behind the controversial video-game series Lovers,” will go down on Valentine’s Day. (Appel by a role as a Bowie-singing Brazilian sailor in Wes Grand Theft Auto asked him to score their sprawl- Room, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway at 60th St. Anderson’s film “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zis- ing, seedy digital world. Then there are his own re- 212-721-6500. Feb. 12-14.) sou.” Jorge’s magical, melancholy Portuguese in- leases, such as last summer’s “Déjà Vu,” which con- terpretations of hits like “Changes” and “Space tinue to surprise old fans and intrigue new ones. Vanguard Jazz Orchestra 50th Anniversary Oddity” earned high praise from their creator, as Moroder brings five decades of thump to this mid- Posterity may have been the furthest thing from well as giving Jorge an American beachhead. For size North Brooklyn club for a rare set of disco clas- the minds of the composer, arranger, and flugel- this two-week run, he’ll sail through harmonically sics and forward-thinking electronic cuts. (Output, horn player Thad Jones and the drummer Mel adventurous, playful originals and covers shaped 74 Wythe Ave., Brooklyn. outputclub.com. Feb. 10.) Lewis when they convened a jazz orchestra to by samba, bossa nova, and other Brazilian styles. play the Village Vanguard on February 7, 1966— (Blue Note, 131 W. 3rd. St. 212-475-8592. Feb. 16-28.) Todd Rundgren their goal was to give worthy players a chance to At sixty-seven, the classic rocker Rundgren is bite into some challenging music on Mondays, Giorgio Moroder showing no signs of slowing down, or losing his when jazz clubs were traditionally closed. The This Italian disco pioneer mapped the patterns of relevance, as the music industry shifts toward more original band established by Jones and Lewis— kick and snare drums that get bodies pulsing be- electronic sounds. He started his career in the ba- both sadly gone—has been through various per- fore many of today’s working d.j.s were tall enough roque-pop realm, back in the late sixties, then var- mutations over the years, but a half century to reach the decks. From his string of hits with ious mind-altering substances expanded his sonic later the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, as it’s cur- Donna Summer during disco’s fever pitch (“Last palette into more psychedelic territory, yielding a rently known, still rattles the walls nearly every Dance,” “Hot Stuff”) to helming the soundtrack slew of early-seventies hits, like “I Saw the Light.” Monday. This performance also celebrates the for the nineteen-eighties hedonist classic “Scar- These days, Rundgren’s embracing dance music, release of “All My Yesterdays,” an album that face,” Moroder’s catalogue was already enviable. an odd choice for an aging rocker, but he still per- newly documents the 1966 opening night of the But it’s his modern renaissance that speaks to the forms with a live band and logs time with Ringo now legendary Jones and Lewis band. (Village producer’s true singularity. The dance-music mas- Starr’s act. (NYCB Theatre at Westbury, 960 Brush Vanguard, 178 Seventh Ave. S., at 11th St. 212-255-

cots Daft Punk tapped him for their 2013 come- Hollow Rd., Westbury, N.Y. 516-247-5200. Feb. 5.) 4037. Feb. 1-8.) KRALL DANIEL BY ILLUSTRATION

14 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016

ART

A video still of Cheryl Donegan’s “Cellar Door,” from her 2000 series “The Janice Tapes.” She re-created several masks from the piece for her new show.

Anything Goes once feminist and politically incorrect. of the latter make a stand-alone impact; A scant five minutes long, “Kiss My one exception is a red-and-white spray- The New York artist Cheryl Donegan Royal Irish Ass (K.M.R.I.A.)” is now painted canvas whose rippling vertical exhibits pacesetting works at the New playing on the fifth floor of the New image evokes both the stability of a Museum spanning twenty-three years. Museum, one of the earliest works in postmodern building and the accident IN 1993, CHERYL DONEGAN staged a riot- “Cheryl Donegan: Scenes and Com- of a slipped gingham napkin. Donegan’s grrrl update of Yves Klein’s “Anthropome- mercials,” an overdue, if overstufed willingness to experiment is never in tries.” In the French artist’s indelible 1960 two-room exhibition, curated by the doubt, from an absurd little painting hybrids of performance and painting, brilliant Johanna Burton, with Sara of Karl Marx on a handprint turkey to he directed nude women, slathered in O’Keefe and Alicia Ritson. For more a group of abject abstractions involving blue, to act as surrogate brushes. Do- than twenty years, Donegan’s under- glitter and metallic tape (among other negan directed herself; D.I.Y. is one of the-radar career has been hard to pin things) on cardboard. It’s the interde- her trademarks. In the resulting video, down but easy to pigeonhole (video pendence of her two-dimensional works we see the artist (in biker boots and her artist), due to the sudden success of a that exhilarates here. Well before the underwear) empty a can of green paint few early tapes. Those works have been current vogue for network-related con- onto the floor, dip her derrière in the pud- so widely circulated by hive-minded cepts began to dominate conversations dle, and leave imprints of it on a sheet of curators that they’ve left the mistaken about painting, Donegan was practicing paper. When she adds a brushstroke—a impression of a one-trick pony. But, as what was about to be preached, treating stem—the image turns into a shamrock. this show makes clear, Donegan has her work as one interrelated system. A man walks into the frame and pours been relentless over the years in her In an adjacent room, there’s an in- Donegan a pint of Guinness. As she lam- search for new approaches and ma- stallation of Donegan’s recent digital poons a modern master, not to mention terials, often staying one step ahead projects, mostly forays into fashion. In the long-standing cliché that painting is a of the future. (In their humor, brevity, a corner with a rack of clothing pur- drinking-man’s club, Donegan also mocks and camera-ready performances, for chased online, bar-coded tags, and a the early-nineties obsession with sancti- instance, her tapes anticipate YouTube.) scanner, it’s tempting to identify a new monious identity politics. Her identity: The main room of the show is a tendency: Cheryl Donegan as a post- a body-conscious Irish-American. The compressed career survey of videos eBay artist.

piece is hilarious but also in conflict, at (nine) and paintings (forty). Very few —Andrea K. Scott INTERMIX ARTS ELECTRONIC COURTESY

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MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES bar takes the form of portraits, self-portraits, and speculative collectors may feel very familiar, and atmospheric still-lifes. Leather was the of- but some critiques bear repeating. Through Feb. Whitney Museum ficial dress code, but not every patron obeyed 28. (Team, 47 Wooster St. 212-279-9219.) “Flatlands” it: one wears a plastic leopard head, another a On the fifth floor, Frank Stella’s abstract paint- beard and an elaborate nun’s habit; others wear Jennifer Bartlett ings swoop off the walls; in this ground-floor nothing at all. Arsenault surveyed the scene with Ten heavily worked pastels of interiors build on exhibition, five young realist painters find new an insider’s fondness for eccentricity, and a dia- photographs that the artist took while she was a possibilities in two dimensions. The best work rist’s attention to detail: a paper napkin peeling patient at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. The comes from Caitlin Keogh, whose depiction of off a bottle that holds a pink rose, a hand hold- anxieties of illness are conveyed through shifts a headless mannequin with visible intestines ing a note that reads, “I used to be a woman.” in scale and a queasy palette of blues, grays, and pays homage to the Chicago Imagist Jim Nutt. Through Feb. 13. (ClampArt, 531 W. 25th St. 646- beiges. Walls with safety bannisters lurch for- By comparison, Orion Martin’s glossy surreal- 230-0020.) ward, like the sets in “The Cabinet of Dr. Cali- ism and Nina Chanel Abney’s mashup of pinups gari”; shadows cast from window mullions extend and Stuart Davis glyphs feel rehashed. Jamian Janet Biggs across the picture plane in bold black slashes. Juliano-Villani, whose wild work can thrill at In the two video installations here, the artist is Often, there’s a view of the Queensboro Bridge large scale, looks lacklustre in a small scene of an- seen riding a horse standing up, receiving elec- and the F.D.R. Drive. In the best of the pastels thropomorphized traffic cones. Mathew Cerletty, tric shocks, and visiting a subterranean cav- here, the East River appears as a tangled spume at thirty-five, the oldest artist in the group, shows ern. Alternating with the stunts and drama are of violet and navy, as personal an impression landscapes as blandly generic as desktop back- banal scenes of medical labs, brain scans, and as any of Monet’s scenes of the Seine or the grounds. The show borrows its title from E. A. the artist’s distracted grandfather at a gem-and- Thames. Through March 20. (The Drawing Cen- Abbott’s 1884 satire, in which a square asserts mineral show. But Biggs’s oblique imagery won’t ter, 35 Wooster St. 212-219-2166.) the existence of a third dimension and ends up clue viewers in to her purported subject: impair- in prison; it would have been nice to see a hint ments of the human mind and failures of mem- Cameron Rowland of such rebelliousness here. Through April 17. ory. Footage of giant halite crystals in the Mer- Under the brand name Corcraft, the New York kers salt mine, in Germany, where the Nazis once State Department of Corrections sells commod- New-York Historical Society hid looted gold, while captivating, is unlikely ities made by prisoners—from lab coats to of- “Silicon City: Computer History to remind viewers of the crystalline proteins in fice furniture to barbecue grills—to other gov- Made in New York” the brain associated with Alzheimer’s. Through ernment agencies and nonprofit organizations. We’ve got finance, media, business, culture: is it Feb. 13. (Tierney, 540 W. 28th St. 212-594-0550.) Entry-level wages were recently reported to be any wonder the Big Apple was once a tech cap- sixteen cents an hour. Rowland, a politically ital, too? This agreeable, tightly packed exhibi- Coco Fusco minded young artist based in New York, regis- tion includes early telephones, telegraphs, and The newest project by the politically minded tered Artists Space as a Corcraft customer—it punch-card machines, but computing really gets Cuban-American artist details the Castro re- is number 91020000, which is the show’s title— going in the late forties with the development of gime’s censorship of allegedly anti-Cuban writ- to procure the materials for this installation, a the Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator, ers. Fusco has gathered first editions of many of pointed critique of the correctional industrial a huge data-processing terminal that lights up the books (including “Sartre on Cuba”) and cop- complex. Six aluminum manhole extenders sug- like a pachinko machine. “New York,” here, can ies of memos calling for their suppression (all of gest a riff on minimalism. A particleboard of- feel like a shorthand for I.B.M. (headquartered which sign off with the word “Revolutionarily”). fice desk from the Attica line is more mundane. in Westchester, and this show’s lead sponsor); a The show also has an extensive program of Fus- But every object here is a readymade fuelled by model of Eero Saarinen’s ovoid pavilion for the co’s films. Don’t miss the grimly hilarious “The a reformer’s agenda—Duchamp by way of An- company at the 1964 World’s Fair features an im- Couple in the Cage,” from 1993, in which Fusco gela Davis. Through March 13. (Artists Space, 38 mersive promotional film, with here-comes-the- and a partner lampoon colonialism by posing as Greene St. 212-226-3970.) future shots of freight trains and skyscrapers, shot undiscovered natives of a forgotten island, only by Charles and Ray Eames. But if the geeks of to find that passersby and media outlets believed 1 the West Coast eventually edged out New York, the hoax was for real. Through Feb. 6. (Gray, 508 MUSEUMS SHORT LIST the city still had them beat on nights out. For W. 26th St. 212-399-2636.) “9 Evenings,” in 1966, Bell Labs teamed with Metropolitan Museum “Wordplay: Matthias icons of avant-garde performance—Robert Raus- Brittany Nelson Buchinger’s Drawings from the Collection of chenberg, Steve Paxton, Deborah Hay—history- Oozing out of their frames, viscous and glit- Ricky Jay.” Through April 11. • Museum of Mod- shaping fusions of art and technology: digital tering, the largest works in Nelson’s show sug- ern Art “Marcel Broodthaers: A Retrospective.” art years ahead of the Internet. Through April 17. gest hot lava or tar. But the roiling abstractions Opens Feb. 14. • Guggenheim Museum “Peter 1 are actually cameraless photographs. Ranging Fisch li David Weiss: How to Work Better.” Opens in size from three to six feet square, they bal- Feb. 5. • Whitney Museum “Laura Poitras: Astro GALLERIES—UPTOWN ance earthy physicality with otherworldliness— Noise.” Opens Feb. 5. • Brooklyn Museum “This we could be looking at views of the earth’s core Place: Photographs of Israel and the West Bank.” Yasuhiro Ishimoto or outer space. The pieces hang alongside small Opens Feb. 12. • American Museum of Natural His- The American photographer first travelled to tintypes of white blocks and boxes floating in tory “The Titanosaur.” Through Jan. 1, 2020. • Asia Kyoto’s seventeenth-century Katsura Imperial voids—apparitions that deepen the mystery. Society “Kamakura: Realism and Spirituality Villa in 1954 to shoot in black-and-white and re- Through Feb. 20. (Morgan Lehman, 535 W. 22nd in the Sculpture of Japan.” Opens Feb. 9. • New turned thirty years later, to work in color. Both St. 212-268-6699.) Museum “Anri Sala: Answer Me.” Opens Feb. 3. series are on view here, in a show that reads as a meditation on restraint. The interior views 1 1 tend to flatten into geometric patchworks of GALLERIES—DOWNTOWN GALLERIES SHORT LIST black- bordered tatami mats and screens, as if in a grisaille Mondrian painting. There are no peo- Alex Bag B UPTOWN Larry Bell Hauser & Wirth. Opens ple in sight and very few decorative objects, so Twenty years ago, Bag was an underground art Feb. 3. (32 E. 69th St. 212-794-4970.) • Mark Grot- what stands out is textures and surfaces—the el- star thanks to her lo-fi videos skewering pop cul- jahn Gagosian. Through Feb. 20. (980 Madison egance of bamboo latticework, the rigor of pol- ture, the art world, and representations of women Ave., at 76th St. 212-744-2313.) • “Floss: Pino Pa- ished wood panels. Through Feb. 20. (Blum, 20 (think Carrie Brownstein transported from Port- scali and Donald Moffett” Boesky. Through Feb. W. 57th St. 212-244-6055.) land to Avenue C). Her new piece, “The Van 27. (118 E. 64th St. 212-680-9889.) B CHELSEA 1 (Redux),” stars Bag’s brother as a sleazy Miami Richard Aldrich Gladstone. Through March 5. art dealer who boasts of his skills finding fresh (515 W. 24th St. 212-206-9300.) • Will Boone / GALLERIES—CHELSEA talent “on the kindergarten circuit.” He secures Pope.L Rosen. Through March 5. (525 W. 24th a residency for three children, all played by the St. 212-627-6000.) • Gregory Crewdson Gago- John Arsenault artist’s son, who sculpt with Play-Doh and paint sian. Through March 5. (522 W. 21st St. 212-741- This witty and unexpectedly soulful memoir with a light sabre in lieu of a brush. Zingers 1717.) • Beverly Semmes Inglett. Opens Feb. 4. (522 about the artist’s stint working at a Bay Area about zombie formalism, post-post-Internet art, W. 24th St. 212-647-9111.)

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OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS

Blackbird THE THEATRE Jeff Daniels and Michelle Williams star in David Harrower’s Olivier-winning drama, about two people who reconnect years after their relation- ship, which took place when he was forty and she was twelve. (Belasco, 111 W. 44th St. 212-239- 6200. Previews begin Feb. 5.)

The Body of an American Dan O’Brien’s play, directed by Jo Bonney for Primary Stages, recounts the true story of the playwright’s friendship with a war photojournal- ist. (Cherry Lane, 38 Commerce St. 866-811-4111. Previews begin Feb. 10.)

Buried Child The New Group revives Sam Shepard’s Pulit- zer Prize-winning drama from 1978, directed by Scott Elliott and featuring Ed Harris and Amy Madigan as a rural Illinois couple with a fam- ily secret. (Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 W. 42nd St. 212-279-4200. In previews.)

Cabin in the Sky Encores! stages the 1940 musical, in which the Lord’s General and the Devil’s son fight over the soul of a ne’er-do-well. Featuring Michael Potts, Chuck Cooper, LaChanze, and Norm Lewis and directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson. (City Center, 131 W. 55th St. 212-581-1212. Feb. 10-14.)

“Thank God for Jokes” opens Feb. 11 at the Lynn Redgrave Theatre. Dot In Colman Domingo’s play, directed by Susan Stro- man, a woman struggling with dementia gathers her Punch Lines Me” and “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend,” three grown children for the holidays. (Vineyard, he honed the persona of a befuddled, 108 E. 15th St. 212-353-0303. Previews begin Feb. 4.) Mike Birbiglia deconstructs the dangers conflict-averse beta male. But he’s not of jokes, in a new one-man show. Drunken with What as mild-mannered as he appears. In Target Margin kicks off its two-season exploration NOT LONG AGO, the comedian Mike “Orange Is the New Black,” his por- of Eugene O’Neill with this study of “Mourning Becomes Electra,” directed by David Herskovits. Birbiglia was on an airplane eating a trayal of a chummy middle-manage- (Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand St. 212-352-3101. chicken-salad sandwich on walnut- ment type from a prison conglomerate Previews begin Feb. 11. Opens Feb. 15.) raisin bread, when a flight attendant became a queasy study of the banality Familiar informed him that a woman sitting of evil. (He based his performance on In Danai Gurira’s drama, directed by Rebecca nearby had a nut allergy. “Well, I won’t George W. Bush.) In “Thank God for Taichman, a Zimbabwean family living in Min- feed them to her or, like, rub them on Jokes,” he recounts the kerfule that nesota is torn about the observance of an Af- rican bridal custom. (Playwrights Horizons, 416 her face,” Birbiglia replied. But the ensued when he hosted the 2012 Go- W. 42nd St. 212-279-4200. Previews begin Feb. 12.) attendant insisted: “She’ll have a re- tham Awards and roasted David O. action if there are nuts in the air.” The Russell, who was one of the honor- Her Requiem LCT3 presents Greg Pierce’s play, directed by comedian finished his sandwich in the ees. Still, he’s no Ricky Gervais-style Kate Whoriskey, in which a high-school girl takes bathroom. provocateur. “My goal is to take the her senior year off to compose a requiem, con- Birbiglia tells this story in his new audience as far as they will possibly go cerning her parents. (Claire Tow, 150 W. 65th St. 212-239-6200. Previews begin Feb. 6.) comic monologue, “Thank God for and still be on my side,” he explained. Jokes” (in previews at the Lynn Red- Ultimately, he went on, “we all have Hughie grave Theatre, opening Feb. 11), in the right to tell jokes, and we all have Forest Whitaker and Frank Wood play a down- on-his-luck gambler and a hotel clerk, in Michael which he weighs the ever-present the right to be ofended by jokes, and Grandage’s production of the Eugene O’Neill dangers of going too far with humor. those two ideas can peacefully co- drama. (Booth, 222 W. 45th St. 212-239-6200. Pre- “At the Redgrave, for example, a hun- exist.” When he toured “Thank God views begin Feb. 8.) dred and ninety-seven people will go, for Jokes” in San Francisco, a kid with The Humans ‘Ha-ha, nuts in the air!’ ” he said re- a lethal nut allergy asked him to auto- Stephen Karam’s disquieting family drama moves cently, over a hot chocolate in Carroll graph his EpiPen. Birbiglia asked the to Broadway with its original cast, including Reed Birney and Jayne Houdyshell. Joe Man- Gardens. “And then three of them boy’s mother if she’d ever had to inject tello directs. (Helen Hayes, 240 W. 44th St. 212- secretly will be, like, ‘That’s my life.’ ” him. “She said, ‘Three times.’ And I 239-6200. In previews.) Birbiglia is an unlikely guide through said, ‘Wow, this kid almost died three Nice Fish the minefield of ofensive humor; in his times so I could tell that joke.’ ” Mark Rylance stars in an adaptation of Louis

previous solo shows, “Sleepwalk with —Michael Schulman Jenkins’s book of poems, about two men on an SAM D’ORAZIO BY ILLUSTRATION

20 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016

1THE THEATRE ice-fishing trip in Minnesota. Claire van Kampen NOW PLAYING world-weary, congenitally ill Caroline (Kayla Fer- directs the American Repertory Theatre produc- guson) and the painfully gracious Anthony (Reg- tion. (St. Ann’s Warehouse, 45 Water St., Brooklyn. The Burial at Thebes gie D. White), as they collaborate on an English- 718-254-8779. Previews begin Feb. 14.) The interment in question is that of Polyneices, class assignment about Whitman. Anthony has son of Oedipus, recently slain in a losing attack volunteered to work with his homebound class- Old Hats against his home city. The new king, Creon (Paul mate, but when he arrives unannounced in her The veteran clowns Bill Irwin and David Shiner O’Brien), has forbidden burial rites to the trai- room it’s an uphill battle convincing her to care— bring back their double act, directed by Tina tor, but Antigone (Rebekah Brockman), the about nineteenth-century poetry and about him. Landau. (Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 warrior’s sister, performs them anyway, claim- Soon he succeeds, and convulsive fits of overshar- W. 42nd St. 212-244-7529. In previews.) ing divine justice over that of the state. In 2004, ing ensue. The contrived rhythm of this insta- the Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney bonding—delivered in what feels like teen-age Pericles adapted Sophocles’ tragedy in pleasing, acces- dialogue written for adults—make the piece drag. Christian Camargo plays the wandering prince in sible verse, combining high-flown Greek syntax By the time a late-breaking, soapy plot twist ar- Theatre for a New Audience’s production of the with colloquial Irish phrasing. In his program rives, you may no longer give a yawp. (59E59, at late Shakespeare play, directed by Trevor Nunn notes, Heaney left no doubt that he was alluding 59 E. 59th St. 212-279-4200.) and featuring music by Shaun Davey. (Polonsky to contemporary events, specifically President Shakespeare Center, 262 Ashland Pl., Brooklyn. 866- Bush’s run-up to the Iraq war, and the director, Noises Off 811-4111. Previews begin Feb. 14.) Charlotte Moore, has encouraged O’Brien to Michael Frayn’s 1982 farce within a farce is about play Creon as a clueless, somewhat haughty po- the comedy of chaos, but it needs to run like Prodigal Son litical animal. But a bit more of the raw passion clockwork to succeed. Fortunately, the Round- Manhattan Theatre Club premières a play writ- Brockman brings to her Antigone might have about’s production, under the shipshape direction ten and directed by John Patrick Shanley, about made Creon’s eventual fall even more pitiful and of Jeremy Herrin, nails nearly every slamming a teen-age boy from the Bronx who transfers to affecting. (DR2, at 103 E. 15th St. 212-727-2737.) door, flung plate of sardines, and pants-around- a private school in New Hampshire; the cast in- the-ankles pratfall. Herrin is helped by a crack- cludes Robert Sean Leonard. (City Center Stage I, The Color Purple erjack cast, including Campbell Scott, as the be- 131 W. 55th St. 212-581-1212. In previews. Opens In this musical version of Alice Walker’s 1982 leaguered director of a British sex comedy called Feb. 9.) novel, Cynthia Erivo plays Celie, a poor, ob- “Nothing On.” Andrea Martin, Megan Hilty, Jer- scure, and blighted black woman living in the emy Shamos, David Furr, Kate Jennings Grant, The Royale South in the early twentieth century. More or and Daniel Davis play the accident-prone actors Marco Ramirez’s play, directed by Rachel less sold o as an adolescent to Mister (Isaiah (with Tracee Chimo and Rob McClure as hap- Chavkin, tells the story of a black heavyweight Johnson), Celie has no defenders, and thus no less stagehands), whose missed cues and accumu- boxing champion (based on Jack Johnson) in six love, until Shug Avery (Jennifer Hudson), an lating rivalries lead to catastrophe for “Nothing rounds. (Mitzi E. Newhouse, 150 W. 65th St. 212- itinerant blues singer, appears. It takes a direc- On” but hilarity for “Noises Off.” It’s almost a 239-6200. Previews begin Feb. 11.) tor with John Doyle’s visionary capabilities to dance piece, if you can stop laughing long enough dispense with the “Mamba’s Daughters” aspect to sit back and appreciate its finesse. (American Sense & Sensibility of Celie’s story and, instead, exercise empathy, Airlines Theatre, 227 W. 42nd St. 212-719-1300.) Bedlam revives its minimalist staging of the critical distance, and an openness to lives and Jane Austen novel, adapted by Kate Hamill and cultures other than his own. By not falling prey Sojourners directed by Eric Tucker. (Gym at Judson, 243 to the story’s periodic sentimentality, Doyle has Mfoniso Udofia’s début is the first in a projected Thompson St. 866-811-4111. In previews. Opens created a thea trical world that’s fresh, vital, and nine-play cycle following a Nigerian family over Feb. 4.) unexpected, and Erivo is central to his work: her forty years. It is set in Houston in 1978, where Celie is not a noble survivor but a stubborn, in- Abasiama (Chinasa Ogbuagu) and her husband, Smart People telligent force, who is well aware of her own wit Ukpong (Hubert Point-Du Jour), are struggling Kenny Leon directs Lydia R. Diamond’s play, and wariness. (Reviewed in our issue of 1/4/16.) with her pregnancy, his college career, their fi- which follows four Harvard intellectuals on the (Jacobs, 242 W. 45th St. 212-239-6200.) nances, their cultural adjustment, and their mar- eve of the 2008 Presidential election. (Second riage, which was arranged by their fathers back Stage, 305 W. 43rd St. 212-246-4422. In previews. The Glory of the World in Africa. When he goes on walkabout at a criti- Opens Feb. 11.) Seventeen men gather in a tricked-out garage— cal time, another Nigerian student, Disciple (Chi- outfitted for proceedings that are at turns casual, naza Uche), who is writing a thesis on his country’s Smokefall elegant, and raucous—to celebrate the centen- diaspora, and Moxie (Lakisha Michelle May), a Unborn twins wax philosophical in this sur- nial birthday of Thomas Merton, the writer and prostitute looking for a way out, compete for her real family drama by Noah Haidle, directed by Trappist monk. The conflict among the partyers, affections. It’s a rich enough setup, but the expo- Anne Kauffman for MCC and featuring Zach- articulated between dances, fights, and mating sition and historical context are awkwardly con- ary Quinto. (Lucille Lortel, 121 Christopher St. 212- rituals (each achieved through beautifully styl- veyed, the dialogue is stiff, and, as directed by Ed 352-3101. Previews begin Feb. 4.) ized choreography), centers on interpretation: Sylvanus Iskandar, the performances skew loud who, precisely, is the Merton on whom they lav- and stereotypical. (Peter Jay Sharp, 416 W. 42nd St. Tarzana ish their love? As they file through real and imag- 212-279-4200. Through Feb. 13.) Radiohole stages a new piece inspired by comic ined facets of his identity—Communist, Catho- books, David Lynch, and the seventies punk lic, etc.—Charles Mee’s dancerly, ecstatic script 1 scene, with a script by Jason Grote. (Perform- leads them into an exploration of the meaning of ALSO NOTABLE ing Garage, 33 Wooster St. theperforminggarage. manhood, especially in a culture inclined toward org. Feb. 11-14.) faint spirituality that would have been derided Allegiance Longacre. Through Feb. 14. • An Amer- in Merton’s mid-century American milieu. Be- ican in Paris Palace. • The Curious Incident of the The Wildness: Sky-Pony’s Rock Fairy Tale tween talky set pieces, the director, Les Waters, Dog in the Night-Time Ethel Barrymore. • Fid- The indie glam band Sky-Pony, led by the writer offers bursts of pure physicality, drawing atten- dler on the Roof Broadway Theatre. • Fun Home Kyle Jarrow and the Broadway actress Lauren tion to the silliness and power of the body, and Circle in the Square. • Hamilton Richard Rod- Worsham, mounts this fantastical evening of reminds us that even stubborn ambiguity can be gers. • The King and I Vivian Beaumont. • Long- music and storytelling, directed by Sam Bunt- fun. (BAM’s Harvey Theatre, 651 Fulton St., Brook- Yarn The Bushwick Starr. Through Feb. 6. • Mau- rock. (Ars Nova, 511 W. 54th St. 212-352-3101. Pre- lyn. 718-636-4100. Through Feb. 6.) rice Hines: Tappin’ Thru Life New World Stages. • views begin Feb. 16.) Misery Broadhurst. Through Feb. 14. • O, Earth I and You HERE. • On Your Feet! Marquis. • Our Mother’s Women Without Men Walt Whitman’s poetry so joyfully embraced Brief Affair Samuel J. Friedman. • A Ride on the The Mint produces Hazel Ellis’s little-known the strangeness of living that it still resounds in Irish Cream Abrons Arts Center. Through Feb. 6. • play from 1938, set in the teachers’ lounge of our national consciousness. It also, alas, tends to School of Rock Winter Garden. • Skeleton Crew an Irish girls’ school and performed by an all- adorn inspirational greeting cards—and the lat- Atlantic Stage 2. Through Feb. 14. • Something female cast. Jenn Thompson directs. (City Center ter territory is where Lauren Gunderson’s drama Rotten! St. James. • Utility Rattlestick. • A View Stage II, 131 W. 55th St. 212-581-1212. In previews.) resides. This teen-age two-hander follows the from the Bridge Lyceum. • Washer/Dryer Beckett.

22 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016

DANCE

A documentary from the Dance on Camera Festival depicts Ted Shawn, who wanted to show that men could be beautiful, too.

Oversoul school that became hugely influential. afternoon. Their usual dinner, one man Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey says, was what they called “carrot ring,” The life of Ted Shawn, the founder of studied there. chopped boiled carrots, molded into a Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. After the demise of Denishawn, ring. (That was the whole dinner.) Bar- “THE MEN WHO DANCED: The Story of Ted Shawn decided to establish an all-male ton Mumaw, the company’s lead dancer Shawn’s Men Dancers and the Birth company, to prove to the world that not (after Shawn), says that the group was of Jacob’s Pillow, 1933-1940,” a thirty- just women, but men, too, could inhabit held together by a sort of “oversoul,” minute film that will be shown on Feb. 14 the world of ideal beauty associated with produced by the men’s constantly work- at the Dance on Camera Festival, at Lin- dance, and do so without any compro- ing together. coln Center (Feb. 12-16), is a modest mise of their masculinity. To that end, The film shows excerpts from dances business with sometimes fuzzy footage, he bought an abandoned farm, called Shawn made for the company, many of but it is an excellent illustration of the Jacob’s Pillow, in Becket, Massachusetts, them stressing weight and strain, labor typical circumstances of early modern and collected a small group of young and combat, in keeping with the goal of dance in America: communal, idealistic, men, almost all of them innocent of persuading audiences that dance could and penniless. Ted Shawn (1891-1972) any dance training. Like a lot of early be virile. They are a little camp, and also was a divinity student at the University modern dancers, he had firm beliefs touching. Shawn didn’t always bring of Denver when he was forced to take about how dance, and beauty, emerged people over to his side. Mumaw says ballet lessons, to strengthen his legs, naturally from the human body. He also there were times when people would after a bout of diphtheria. Around that could not aford to pay trained dancers. warn them, “There are fifty guys out time, he also went to a vaudeville show In 1982, eight of these men came there who are going to come and break and saw Ruth St. Denis, a riveting free- together for a reunion at Jacob’s Pil- up the show.” Such guys were not en- style dancer, in her Pharaonic spectacle low, which now houses what is proba- tirely mistaken in their suspicions. “Egypta.” He auditioned for St. Denis, bly America’s foremost summer dance Shawn was homosexual. Mumaw was hoping to join her troupe. She hired festival. Interviews with them occupy a his lover during the lifetime of the him as her partner and, a few months good part of “The Men Who Danced.” troupe. This was never spoken of in the later, married him, though she was about They talk about the spartan conditions company, nor, indeed, is it mentioned twelve years older than he. Together they in which the group lived, rehearsing in in the film, which was released in 1985.

founded Denishawn, a company and the morning and chopping wood in the —Joan Acocella ARCHIVES FESTIVAL DANCE PILLOW AND JACOB’S COLLECTION THEATRE HARVARD COURTESY

24 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016

DANCE

New York City Ballet “Alwin Nikolais Celebration” Justin Peck’s new ballet, “The Most Incredible With its trippy abstractions and beeping elec- Thing,” is the young choreographer’s first foray tronic scores, the dance-theatre of Alwin Niko- into the realm of narrative. The story, by Hans lais was a nineteen-fifties vision of the future Christian Andersen, involves a young artist who that the psychedelic sixties could embrace. In creates a wondrous clock that produces lifelike fig- recent years, the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Com- ures who act out various scenes, from Adam and pany, of Salt Lake City, has been the principal Eve in the Garden of Eden to the Seven Deadly keeper of the flame (not to mention the requisite Sins. Later, the company returns to a more fa- props and costumes). The troupe returns to the miliar story, “La Sylphide,” a nineteenth-century Joyce with “Tensile Involvement” (1955), a clas- tale about a young dreamer who falls in love with sic piece featuring an entangling web of elastic a woodland sprite, and suffers the consequences; ribbons, along with several works from the late it’s one of the oldest Romantic ballets still per- seventies and early eighties. (175 Eighth Ave., at formed. Peter Martins, who danced it as a young 19th St. 212-242-0800. Feb. 9-14.) man, set it on the company last year. It shares a double bill with George Balanchine’s thrilling trib- “Kathryn Posin Dance Company with Live ute to Russian Imperial classicism “Tchaikovsky Music by Meredith Monk” Piano Concerto No. 2,” once known as “Ballet Im- Two veteran New York artists come together to perial.” • Feb. 3 at 7:30, Feb. 6 at 2, and Feb. 7 at 3: open 92nd Street Y’s Harkness Dance Festival, “Ballo della Regina,” “Kammermusik No. 2,” and with a program of works by the choreographer “Tchaikovsky Suite No. 3.” • Feb. 4 at 7:30 and Kathryn Posin. “Climate Control” is set to an ex- Feb. 5 at 8: “Walpurgisnacht Ballet,” “Sonatine,” cerpt from Meredith Monk’s spare 1990 musical “Mozartiana,” and “Symphony in C.” • Feb. 6 at 8 work “Facing North.” Monk will perform the vocal and Feb. 9-11 at 7:30: “Polaris,” “The Blue of Dis- duet—a conversation of sounds suggesting wan- tance,” “Common Ground,” “Estancia,” and “The derers in the wilderness—with Theo Bleckmann, Most Incredible Thing.” • Feb. 12 at 8, Feb. 13 at sharing the stage with Posin’s dancers. Posin, a stu- 2 and 8, Feb. 14 at 3 and 7:30, and Feb. 16 at 7:30: dent of Louis Horst and Anna Sokolow, is a bit “La Sylphide” and “Tchaikovsky Suite No. 2.” of a maverick, whose works combine the rigorous (David H. Koch, Lincoln Center. 212-496-0600. structure of ballet with the freedom of modern Through Feb. 28.) dance. Her crack team of dancers includes Amar Ramasar (on Feb. 11 only) and Megan Dickin- Robbinschilds son, formerly of the Pennsylvania Ballet. (Lex- “Hex,” the title of the latest work directed by ington Ave. at 92nd St. 212-415-5500. Feb. 11-12.) Sonya Robbins and Layla Childs, refers both to a spell and to a six-sided shape. For this project, “Badke” six notable dancer-choreographers, including Va- A collaboration between the Belgian companies nessa Anspaugh and Eleanor Smith, each created Les Ballets C de la B and KVS and ten Palestinian her own short dance before offering it to the scru- performers, “Badke” is a centerpiece of this year’s tiny of the group—a process meant to highlight Live Arts Festival, which is broadening its focus, subtle forms of collective influence and author- this time around, to a geographic region: North ship. (Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Africa and the Middle East. In this high-energy Center, 280 Broadway. 646-837-6809. Feb. 3-6.) work, the traditional folk dance dabke collides with various pop forms and politics. The effect is that Gemma Bond Dance of a culture under pressure exploding. (New York So far, the choreography that Gemma Bond has Live Arts, 219 W. 19th St. 212-924-0077. Feb. 11-13.) made—for New York Theatre Ballet and other small troupes—has resembled her dancing in the LMnO3 corps of American Ballet Theatre: adept, classy, The company name may be awkward—it’s an ac- not especially attention-grabbing, but lightly per- ronym for the last names of Deborah Lohse, Cori fumed with charm. For her first stand-alone pro- Marquis, and Donnell Oakley—but these women, gram, ten excellent dancers, mostly friends from who met working for Doug Elkins, are charm- A.B.T., perform four of her pieces. (Danspace ers. Their awkwardness is usually intentional, Project, St. Mark’s Church In-the-Bowery, Second and comic. The team’s first evening-length work, Ave. at 10th St. 866-811-4111. Feb. 4-6.) “B.A.N.G.S.: Made in America,” uses another acronym (one for remembering which adjectives “Lyrical Dances for a Lost Generation” precede nouns in French), along with silly out- Conceived by the stylish and sometimes eccen- fits, to have fun with ideas of categorization and tric choreographer Raja Feather Kelly, this is a femininity. (Joe’s Pub, 425 Lafayette St. 212-967- showcase with a get-back-to-basics agenda. Es- 7555. Feb. 12-13.) chewing abstruse concepts and multimedia ef- fects, each of the dozen or so participating cho- Dance on Camera Festival reographers—a group distinguished by Melissa The festival, now in its forty-fourth year, includes Toogood, Nicole Wolcott, and Cori Olinghouse, an engaging hodgepodge of documentaries, dance among others—picks a pop recording and dances films, and experimental shorts. (There are nine- to it for the love of dancing. (GK Arts Center, 29 teen features and thirty-six shorts in all.) Often, Jay St., Brooklyn. 212-600-0047. Feb. 5-6.) the biographical sketches are among the most in- teresting. “The Flight Fantastic” is centered on a “Untapped!” / RAW Dance Company family of Mexican trapeze artists called the Fly- This crew from Brisbane, Australia, is to tap dance ing Gaonas, known for their flawless triple som- what the Bad Boys of Dance are to ballet. The ersaults under the big top. “Our Last Tango” is five guys—and their backup band—offer a tes- an entrée into the nocturnal and highly ritualized tosterone-driven, energetic, rap-and-rock-infused world of tango, through the story of the Argen- rhythmic barrage, leavened by the group’s irrev- tine tanguero Juan Carlos Copes, one of the dance’s erent Aussie edge. They don’t just tap: they do great lions. The film traces his relationship, on- flips, leap, shake their hips, and, for good mea- stage and off, with the equally accomplished María sure, tell a few jokes. (New Victory, 209 W. 42nd Nieves Rego. (Walter Reade Theatre, Lincoln Cen- St. 646-223-3010. Feb. 5-21.) ter. 212-875-5600. Feb. 12-16.)

26 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 death penalty for his client and takes his argument all the way to the Supreme Court. Although such perseverance wins him few friends, endangers his MOVIES family, and dismays his wife (Amy Ryan), it pays off when an American pilot is downed in Soviet 1 airspace. Donovan is asked to travel to Berlin to few more players to take the plunge, including a get the pilot back, in exchange for Abel. As you OPENING miserable hedge-fund manager (Steve Carell), a would expect from Spielberg, the tale is securely pair of greenhorns from out of town (John Magaro told, with tautness and skill; what lifts it above The Club Reviewed below in Now Playing. Open- and Finn Wittrock), and our sly narrator (Ryan some of his other historical dramas is a touch of ing Feb. 5. (In limited release.) • Deadpool An Gosling), who works at Deutsche Bank. These comic friction—courtesy of a smart script writ- adaptation of the Marvel Comics story in the are just some of the unlovely figures who pace ten by Joel and Ethan Coen, in league with Matt “X-Men” series, about a cancer patient whose back and forth through Adam McKay’s new film, Charman. Hanks, as limber as ever, is required experimental treatment endows him with super- based on the nonfiction book by Michael Lewis. to square off against the restrained Rylance, who powers. Directed by Tim Miller; starring Ryan The movie pops and fizzes with invention, and makes Abel a witty and formidable foe. Somehow, Reynolds and Morena Baccarin. Opening Feb. 12. even takes time out, now and then, to educate— his kinship with Donovan offers a brief glow of (In wide release.) • Hail, Caesar! Ethan and Joel screeching to a halt and summoning a celebrity warmth amid the snows of the Cold War.—A.L. Coen directed this comedy, set in the nineteen- (Selena Gomez, say, or Margot Robbie) to steer (10/26/15) (In wide release.) fifties, about a Hollywood studio publicist who us through the economic verbiage. Everything attempts to cope with a scandal. Starring Josh you always wanted to know about credit-default Carol Brolin, Scarlett Johansson, and George Clooney. swaps but were afraid to ask: it’s all here. So win- One day in the nineteen-fifties, Carol Aird (Cate Opening Feb. 5. (In wide release.) • Pride and Prej- ning are these tactics, and so cheerfully headlong Blanchett), a wife and mother, is shopping for udice and Zombies A horror comedy, based on is the mood, that we’re hardly aware of rooting for Christmas presents at a department store in Man- the novel by Seth Grahame-Smith, about an in- a bunch of utter cynics who are poised to make hattan. She comes across a salesgirl, Therese Be- vasion of the undead in early-nineteenth- century tens of millions of dollars from the misfortunes of livet (Rooney Mara), and they fall in love, right England. Starring Lily James and Sam Riley. Di- others.—A.L. (12/14/15) (In wide release.) there. Todd Haynes’s film then follows the women rected by Burr Steers. Opening Feb. 5. (In limited as they meet for lunch, hang out at Carol’s home, release.) • Where to Invade Next In this documen- Bridge of Spies embark on an aimless journey, and go to bed— tary, Michael Moore visits countries in Europe The new Steven Spielberg film starts in 1957, conscious, all the while, of what they are risking, and compares their social policies to those of the with the arrest of a Soviet spy named Rudolf Abel flouting, or leaving behind. Therese has a boy- United States government. Opening Feb. 12. (In (Mark Rylance) in Brooklyn. The man assigned to friend (Jake Lacy), and Carol has a husband (Kyle limited release.) • Zoolander 2 Ben Stiller directed defend him is James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks), a Chandler) and a child, although the maternal in- and stars in this comedy sequel, about a fashion local insurance lawyer—trusted, experienced, and stinct gets short dramatic shrift. That feels true model who tries to thwart killers targeting ce- thought unlikely to cause a stir. Yet Donovan turns to Patricia Highsmith, whose 1952 novel, “The lebrities. Co-starring Owen Wilson, Penélope out to be a stubborn soul, who fights against the Price of Salt,” is the foundation of the film. The Cruz, Kristen Wiig, and Will Ferrell. Opening Feb.1 12. (In wide release.) NOW PLAYING

Anomalisa Has anyone previously employed stop-motion ani- mation for the purpose of sadness? That, certainly, is the tone set by Charlie Kaufman and Duke John- son in this new film, which finds Michael Stone (voiced by David Thewlis), a customer-service guru, flying into Cincinnati to give a speech. He takes a cab into town, checks into a hotel, meets up with an old flame, has sex with a new flame, and flies home to Los Angeles. So much for plot. From this humdrum material the filmmakers have fash- ioned something singular and strange, not least in its alarming uniformity; all the figures, regardless of age and sex, bear much the same face, and all of their lines are spoken by Tom Noonan. Just as we start to wonder if humanity has been factory- farmed, Michael stumbles upon an exception— Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who sounds differ- ent, and whose very existence, therefore, holds the promise of a new start. Is she for real, though? And will she last? The movie is stained with dour comedy, and there’s no mistaking the complaints that it levels against a consumer society; the dex- terity of the animation is matched only by the fog of its ineffable gloom. With music by Carter Burwell.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed in our issue of 1/18/16.) (In wide release.)

The Big Short Years before the financial crisis of 2008, early rumblings are detected by Michael Burry (Chris- tian Bale), whose investment skills are in sharp contrast to his social unease. Unlike most of his peers, he spies the cracks in the housing market and wagers that, before too long, it will all come tumbling down. Word of his gamble inspires a

MOVIES

fine screenplay is by Phyllis Nagy, who drains iting, to another form of modernization—the de- away the sourness of the book; what remains is sanctification of churches that occurs as Com- a production of clean and frictionless beauty, munists pillage icons, cut the crosses off domes, down to the last, strokable inch of clothing and and topple steeples with a roaring mob violence. skin. Yet Haynes and his stars, for all their styl- Vertov dramatizes these acts with jazzy imagery ish restraint, know that elegance alone will not that includes multiple exposures and animation. suffice. Inside the showcase is a storm of feeling. He films with a wild, expressive energy, panning With Sarah Paulson, as Carol’s best friend.—A.L. rapidly to follow the swinging clapper of a bell (11/23/15) (In limited release.) and depicting electric wires as ecstatic striations of the sky. Rapid industrialization under a five- The Club year plan is filmed with high-contrast, abstract The Catholic Church’s minimal response to the flamboyance and audacious optical manipula- sexual abuse of children by priests is the motor tions. Vertov’s love of pure geometric forms, as of Pablo Larraín’s drama, set in a home for dis- conjured by striking angles on train tracks and graced priests and one nun in a remote Chilean orderly ranks of Party members, contrasts pain- village. A local resident named Sandokan (Ro- fully with a partisan sculptor’s old-fashioned berto Farías) loudly and explicitly accuses a newly bust of Lenin; that contrast is the film’s stifled arrived priest (José Soza) of raping him when tragedy.—R.B. (Anthology Film Archives; Feb. 4.) he was a child. After the priest’s suicide, Father García (Marcelo Alonso), a Church official, ar- The 5th Wave rives to put the house in order. But the priests and Aliens are here, and they are taking over; in fact, nun who live there—charged with a variety of of- we may not even notice them until it’s too late, fenses, from sexual depredation to baby snatching since they can resemble us in every way. Such is the to complicity with the former military regime— politically charged foundation of J. Blakeson’s film, have made the best of their unsupervised leisure which is adapted from the novel by Rick Yancey. and plot to resist the stern new rules. The core of The book was aimed squarely at young adults, and the film is Father García’s series of one-on-one the movie is packed with them, starting with Cas- interrogations of the house residents, whom he sie (Chloë Grace Moretz), who is busy enjoying confronts with their offenses and who turn the ta- high school in Ohio when—total bummer—the bles on him to challenge his—and the Church’s— world begins to end. Soon she has nothing left claim to moral authority. (Along the way, the but a gun, a Teddy bear, and a lost little brother doctrine of celibacy is sharply questioned, too.) (Zackary Arthur), whom she urgently needs to The tightly patterned story has a musical struc- find. Along the way, she meets a former school- ture that underscores the drama’s starkest, deep- mate, Ben (Nick Robinson), and makes out in the est conflicts. Only a clichéd view of the trauma- back of a truck with Evan (Alex Roe), who has a tized Sandokan vitiates the film’s outraged power. secret quandary that cries out to be shared; as a In Spanish.—Richard Brody (In limited release.) result, the final forty minutes of the film become so laughable as to be therapeutic. In order to save Creed mankind, these kids must join a junior army and This stirring, heartfelt, rough-grained reboot shoot grownups; if you’d removed the earnestness of the “Rocky” series is the brainchild of Ryan and added a touch of craziness and camp, the whole Coogler (“Fruitvale Station”), who directed, wrote thing might have been fun. With Maria Bello, as the story, and co-wrote the script with Aaron Cov- a sergeant; with her powder-white skin, combat ington. It starts in a juvenile-detention center in fatigues, and scarlet lips, she cuts the coolest fig- Los Angeles, where young Adonis Johnson is con- ure in the movie.—A.L. (2/1/16) (In wide release.) fined. He’s soon adopted by Mary Anne Creed (Phylicia Rashad), Apollo’s widow, who informs The Heartbreak Kid him that the boxer (who died before Adonis’s Elaine May’s anxious 1972 comedy is about two birth) was his father. As an adult, Adonis (played young New York Jews, Leonard Allen Cantrow by Michael B. Jordan) defies Mary Anne to pursue (Charles Grodin), a sporting-goods salesman, and his own boxing career, moving to Philadelphia to Lila Ina Kolodny (Jeannie Berlin, May’s daugh- be trained by Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), ter), who meet in a singles bar and are soon wed. his father’s rival. The burly backstory and weight But on the first day of their honeymoon in Miami of personal history don’t stall the drama but pro- Beach, Len meets Kelly Corcoran (Cybill Shep- vide its fuel. Coogler—aided by the cinematog- herd), the porcelain shiksa goddess of his dreams, rapher Maryse Alberti’s urgent long takes—links for whom he neglects—and prepares to leave— the physical sacrifices of boxing and acting alike his bride. May directs with bristling restraint: and binds Adonis’s martial passion to his family the camera runs at length, keeping the characters feeling. (The focussed heat of Jordan’s commit- trapped in the excruciating moment, and, with ment meshes well with Stallone’s wry, haunted the central trio of typecast actors tightly held this serenity.) Adonis also finds sweet and mature side of parody, the humor oscillates between sour romance with the rising singer Bianca (played comedy and droll tragedy. According to May, it’s with febrile passion by Tessa Thompson), who a man’s world; working with a Neil Simon script has physical struggles of her own. Coogler inge- based on a novel by Bruce Jay Friedman, she cap- niously turns the myth of bootstrap-tugging ex- tures the implausibly boundless sense of wonder, ertions on its head: without family and connec- possibility, and entitlement of a time when even tions, the new star of the boxing ring wouldn’t a self-proclaimed schmuck like Len Cantrow, en- stand a fighting chance.—R.B. (In wide release.) dowed with little but the gift of gab, attempted daring feats of self-liberation.—R.B. (Anthology Enthusiasm, or Symphony of the Don Basin Film Archives; Feb. 12 and Feb. 14.) The vigor and horror of the Russian Revolution provide both the substance and the stylistic in- Jane Got a Gun spiration of Dziga Vertov’s 1931 film. It begins After a troubled gestation, Gavin O’Connor’s West- with a historic transformation by means of mass ern, set in 1871, hobbles onscreen at last. Natalie media: a young woman’s enlightenment thanks to Portman plays Jane Hammond, whose husband, a radio broadcast of a symphony orchestra. This Bill (Noah Emmerich), returns badly wounded to cultural modernization is linked, by allusive ed- their homestead in the New Mexico Territory. Hard

28 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 MOVIES on his heels is a vicious gang, led by John Bishop an informative overview of his life, work, and want of accommodation, sleeping inside a dead (Ewan McGregor), who wants his pound of flesh. ideas. The film’s fractured, collagelike compo- horse. The sequence of hardships is so extreme The task of stopping him falls to Jane, who reluc- sition is anchored by Coleman’s 1984 visit to his and so unrelenting as to verge on the comical, tantly recruits Dan Frost (Joel Edgerton), a former home town of Fort Worth, where he received but DiCaprio tamps down any hint of levity, as lover, who is far from eager to help. Indeed, despite official tributes and performed his orchestral does the director, Alejandro González Iñárritu. the title of the film, what matters is not the bear- work with the local symphony and with his own Though Iñárritu’s eye is as restless as it was in his ing of a weapon but the possession of a fully loaded band. Dramatized reconstructions of his youth, last movie, “Birdman,” the mood is chastened, grudge, and the action—such as it is—feels tem- filmed performances from the sixties onward, and the merry-go-round has made way for a pun- pered and delayed by a curious diffidence, as if the and discussions with him and other musicians ishing regime. We are given gestures toward a characters would rather be elsewhere, doing some- and associates (including William Burroughs plot: Glass is devoted to his son, Hawk (For- thing else. Even the landscape seems to shrink from and Brion Gysin) mesh with Clarke’s diverse rest Goodluck), and beset by a growling nem- grandeur. Although the eventual shoot-out has its array of video manipulations and her flamboy- esis (Tom Hardy), who is almost as bearish as explosive moments, it is preceded by a number of ant, rapid-fire editing, which break through the the bear. Such figures only compound the bitter ill-advised flashbacks, and followed by a change of reportorial evidence to evoke the visions and mood, while a more promising character, a youth fortunes that no one, including Jane, can quite be- fantasies from which Coleman’s music arises. by the name of Bridger (played by the excellent lieve.—A.L. (2/1/16) (In wide release.) (His discussion of an earlier plan for sexual ab- Will Poulter), falls away. The cinematography, stinence is as chilling as it is revealing.) Clarke often radiant, and as crisp as ice, is by Emman- Joy relates Coleman’s grandly transformative mul- uel Lubezki.—A.L. (1/4/16) (In wide release.) Painful personal overtones resonate in David O. timedia projects (including one involving satel- Russell’s boisterous comic view—based on a true lite transmissions) to her own; his troubled ef- Room story—of an entrepreneur’s conflict-riddled rise fort to rehabilitate a Lower East Side building A boy named Jack (Jacob Tremblay) celebrates to success. Jennifer Lawrence stars as a divorced highlights the free-flowing connection of art and his fifth birthday. He and his mother, Joy (Brie young mother on Long Island who’s in a rut. life.—R.B. (Museum of Arts and Design; Feb. 5.) Larson), make a cake, but they cannot go out to Smart, creative, and handy, she works at an air- buy candles. Other things, too, seem awry. Jack port counter and copes with her divorced parents The Revenant looks like a girl, with long hair, and he some- (Virginia Madsen and Robert De Niro), her fa- In the eighteen-twenties, a band of fur hunters times sleeps in a wardrobe, which he calls “Ward- ther’s new girlfriend (Isabella Rossellini), her bit- is attacked by American Indians in the wooded robe.” Slowly, we piece together their story: Joy ter half-sister (Elisabeth Röhm), her ex-husband wilds around the Missouri River. A few survi- has been kidnapped o the street and impris- (Édgar Ramirez), and her supportive but ailing vors start the long journey back to camp, first oned for years in a soundproof shed by a man grandmother (Diane Ladd). Overwhelmed by a by boat (where the air of twitching vulnerability they know only as Old Nick (Sean Bridgers). Cinderella-like burden of chores, Joy designs a recalls that of “Apocalypse Now”) and then on Jack is his child, by Joy, whom he rapes at regu- new kind of mop, finds an investor, and is thrust foot. One of them, Hugh Glass (Leonardo Di- lar intervals. The first half of Lenny Abraham- into the predatory world of attorneys and execu- Caprio), is mauled by a bear and left for dead. son’s movie, adapted by Emma Donoghue from tives. Russell, who wrote the script and co-wrote Alone, he continues his pilgrimage—eating raw her own novel, is extremely painful to watch, and the story with Annie Mumolo, captures the mag- meat and fish, tumbling through rapids, and, for sullen with routine; the second half, in which the ical moment when Joy’s private inspiration finds public expression; the movie’s best scene features Bradley Cooper, as a TV executive who shows Joy the ropes. The core of the film is Joy’s mastery of the killer instinct, her deft plotting of bold con- frontations. Russell’s portrait of Joy stints on intimacy, but her self-realization in response to crises is thrilling. With Dascha Polanco, as Joy’s best friend and savior.—R.B. (In wide release.)

Mad Max: Fury Road The fourth chapter in the saga of Max and the best, even if you emerge with dented eyeballs. The loner’s role that belonged to Mel Gibson now passes to Tom Hardy, who, as is only proper, gets little to say but plenty to do, most of it involv- ing fire, dust, velocity, and blood. The time is the looming future, the landscape is dry and stripped of greenery, and, to cap it all, Max is a prisoner. Once escaped, he teams up with Furiosa (Charlize Theron), a one-armed and single-minded truck driver, who is carrying a cargo of young women— stealing them, in fact, from a masked tyrannical brute named Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays- Byrne), who uses them as breeders. The feminist slant of the movie comes as a welcome surprise, while the rampant verve of the action sequences is pretty much what admirers of George Miller, the direc- tor, have been praying for. Rarely has a filmmaker seemed less in need of a brake pedal. Luckily, his sense of humor remains undamaged, and his eye for extravagant design is as keen as ever; some of the makeup is so drastic that you can barely distinguish between human flesh and the bodywork of cars. The director of photogra- phy, keeping his composure in the melee, is John Seale.—A.L. (5/25/15) (In wide release.)

Ornette: Made in America Shirley Clarke’s 1985 documentary about the crucial jazz innovator Ornette Coleman joins an impressionistic portrait of the musician with

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 29 MOVIES

captives plan a break for freedom, displays more sole focus is on the progress of the journalistic spirit, and it also provides a welcome role for task. The result is restrained but never dull, and, Joan Allen, as Joy’s mother. But there is some- barring a couple of overheated moments, when thing pat about the movie’s main conceit; Trem- a character shouts in closeup, we don’t feel har- blay is startling, but you sense that the film is ried or hectored. The film becomes a study in using a horrific plight (reminiscent of several togetherness, both bad and fruitful; on the one real-life cases) to oer up a meditative study of hand, we get the creepy sense of a community childhood, and of just how much a child’s view closing ranks, while on the other there is the of things—first blinkered, then opening wide— old-school pleasure of watching an ensemble in can teach us. Does that lesson not come at far too full spate. The reporters are played by Michael great a cost?—A.L. (In limited release.) Keaton, Brian d’Arcy James, Mark Ruffalo, and Rachel McAdams; their superiors, by John Slat- Salesman tery and Liev Schreiber; and the lawyers, by Billy In this 1968 documentary, Albert and David Crudup and Stanley Tucci, who, as usual, calmly Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin capture the quiet pockets every scene in which he appears.—A.L. desperation of four travelling Bible salesmen on (11/9/15) (In limited release.) the road in New England and Florida, as well as that of the poor souls they besiege with their Within Our Gates spiel. The foot soldiers, all pasty middle-aged Oscar Micheaux’s bold, forceful melodrama, men, go by the nicknames the Bull, the Rab- from 1919—the oldest surviving feature by a black bit, the Gipper, and the Badger; the latter, Paul American director—unfolds the vast political di- Brennan, is the heart of the film. The filmmakers mensions of intimate romantic crises. Evelyn spend plenty of time with him in his car and re- Preer stars as Sylvia Landry, a young black woman cord his insightful perorations about his job and in a Northern town, who suffers a broken engage- his colleagues—and it is precisely his detachment, ment. She heads home to the South and becomes a his ability to assess what he’s doing, that renders teacher in an underfinanced school for black chil- him less successful and more frustrated in his un- dren; travelling to Boston to do fund-raising, she gratifying, predatory work. The Catholic Church, meets an ardent doctor (Charles D. Lucas) and which lent its imprimatur to the overpriced tomes a white philanthropist, who help with the cause. and provided the salesmen with their leads, has an With a brisk and sharp-edged style, Micheaux unappealing offscreen role; but the onscreen vil- sketches a wide view of black society, depicting lain is the hectoring sales manager, whose creed an engineer with an international career, a private of total responsibility drives his staff to depress- eye with influential friends, a predatory gangster, ing self-punishment. The filmmakers, despite devoted educators—and the harrowing ambient their rueful gaze, inspire empathy for all parties violence of Jim Crow, which he depicts unspar- to this miserable commerce.—R.B. (Museum of ingly and gruesomely. Along with his revulsion the Moving Image; Feb. 13.) at the hateful rhetoric and murderous tyranny of Southern whites, Micheaux adds a special satirical Son of Saul disgust for a black preacher who offers his parish- The first feature film by László Nemes confronts ioners Heaven as a reward for their uneducated a subject that many people would prefer not to submissiveness. Micheaux’s narrative manner is as think about, let alone to cast in dramatic form. daring as his subject matter, with bold flashbacks In death camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, the and interpolations amplifying the story; a remark- Sonderkommando were teams of prisoners who able twist regarding Sylvia’s identity, slipped in were forced to deal with other prisoners as they at the end, opens a nearly hallucinatory histori- arrived—herding them into the gas chambers, cal vortex. Silent.—R.B. (Film Forum; Feb. 15.) sorting through their discarded clothes, and fer- rying their bodies to the furnaces. A movie that 1 staged all this in detail would not be watchable, REVIVALS AND FESTIVALS or even defensible; what Nemes does, therefore, is to focus on one such assistant, a Hungarian Jew Titles with a dagger are reviewed. named Saul Ausländer (Géza Röhrig), whom we see in almost every shot. The film shows not the Anthology Film Archives The films of Dziga Ver- horror of the events around him but his reaction tov. Feb. 4 at 7:30: “Enthusiasm, or Symphony of to them; his dark stare does the work on our be- the Don Basin.” G • Feb. 6 at 4: “A Sixth of the half. There is a plot here—two separate plots, in World” (1926; silent). • Feb. 7 at 4: “The Eleventh fact, which might be thought excessive, although Year” (1928; silent). • “Valentine’s Day Massa- they crystallize the fervor and the despair of the cre.” Feb. 11 at 9:15 and Feb. 13 at 7: “Modern Ro- inmates. First, there is an uprising and a break- mance” (1981, Albert Brooks). • Feb. 12 at 7 and out, against formidable odds. Second, Saul rec- Feb. 14 at 8:45: “The Heartbreak Kid.” G BAM ognizes, among the dead, his own son, and much Cinématek The films of Michael Mann. Feb. 5 of the movie is driven by his quest for a rabbi to at 2, 4:30, 7, and 9:30 and Feb. 7 at 4:30 and 9:30: say the mourner’s Kaddish for the child. Some- “Thief” (1981). • Feb. 6 at 2, 5:30, and 9: “Heat” how, Nemes finds a balance: his exhausting movie (1995). • Feb. 9 at 9:30: “The Keep” (1983). Film pays its respects but also burns with rage.—A.L. Forum “Pioneers of African-American Cinema.” (12/21 & 28/15) (In limited release.) Feb. 14 at 1: “The Blood of Jesus” (1941, Spencer Williams). • Feb. 15 at 7: “Within Our Gates.” G Spotlight Museum of Arts and Design The films and vid- There are many ways in which the new Tom Mc- eos of Shirley and Wendy Clarke. Feb. 5 at 7: “Or- Carthy film could have gone wrong. The subject nette: Made in America.” G • Feb. 12 at 7: “Love could hardly be thornier: the uncovering, by an Tapes” (1977-2001, Wendy Clarke). Museum of the investigative team at the Boston Globe, of wide- Moving Image “See It Big! Documentary.” Feb. 5 spread sexual abuse by Catholic priests. The vic- at 7: “Woodstock” (1970, Michael Wad leigh). • tims were children, but we meet them as adults, Feb. 12 at 7: “The Last Waltz” (1978, Martin Scor- when they tell their stories. The movie, scripted sese). • Feb. 13 at 4:30: “Salesman.” G • Feb. 13 by McCarthy and Josh Singer, resists any temp- at 7: “Gimme Shelter” (1970, Albert and David tation to reconstruct the original crimes, and the Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin).

30 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 ABOVE & BEYOND

Lunar New Year Parade and Festival tures guests including the band Rogue Oliphant head; the singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega will Sara D. Roosevelt Park is one of the Lower East and the writers Salman Rushdie and Glenn Pater- perform. (Symphony Space, Broadway at 95th St. Side’s treasures, a bright stretch of green tucked son. Rounding out the evening with musical per- 212-864-5400. Feb. 10.) into the shadow of Pace University High School. formances are the genre-blending composer and Residents of nearby Chinatown frequent the park performance artist Laurie Anderson and the clas- Word Lovers’ Valentine Publishing Panel for refuge from downtown’s grit, and it will burst sical revivalists Miracles of Modern Science, who Susan Shapiro’s “instant gratification takes too with even more color than usual for the annual wring out new sounds from the violin, cello, man- long” classes, taught at New York University, the Lunar New Year festival, as more than five hundred dolin, drums, and double bass. (Irish Arts Center, New School, and in private seminars, task her thousand fireworks float above elaborate choreo- 553 W. 51st St. 212-757-3318. Feb. 8 at 7:30.) students with writing and publishing a piece by graphed performances and venders serving a bevy the end of the course—for added incentive, at- of traditional dishes (Feb. 8). On Feb. 14 at 1, a pa- “Happy Ending” tendees are encouraged to pay the fee with newly rade will begin on Mott St. at Canal St., and snake This musical series has recast the idea of a talk: earned funds from published works. The author through Little Italy and Chinatown, past the Man- guests, who have included Lena Dunham and will gather an insightful group of gatekeepers to hattan Bridge, and back up toward the park, to ring Vampire Weekend, take the stage for wily im- share trade secrets on breaking into the magazine in the Year of the Monkey. (Sara D. Roosevelt Park, provisational stunts, while musicians lead group and publishing worlds. Speakers include the Times E. Houston St. at Chrystie St. betterchinatown.com.) sing-alongs of beloved covers. This week, the editor Peter Catapano, the Beacon Press book ed- founder and host Amanda Stern is joined by itor Rakia Clark, and the Rolling Stone editor Jerry Bloody Valentine’s Weekend the indie novelist Samantha Hunt and the best- Portwood. (N.Y.U. Bookstore, 726 Broadway. 212- Hudson Square’s infamous haunted house opens seller and Pulitzer Prize finalist Colson White- 998-4678. Feb. 10 at 6.) its doors for a Valentine’s Day engagement that’s not for the fainthearted. Blood Manor’s guests walk through twenty minutes of tightly choreographed chaos: groups of six navigate chilling sections of a haunted mansion, dodging zombified hosts through labyrinthine corridors. For three nights each year, the manor houses a Valentine’s Day massacre that beats out its Halloween regimen by sheer nov- elty, serving as a fun alternative to tamer date- night plans. Dress appropriately: there’s a chance of1 splatter. (163 Varick St. 212-290-2825. Feb. 12-14.) AUCTIONS AND ANTIQUES

Given the contentiousness of the current politi- cal climate, we can all use reminders of our better nature. One place to look is the trove of Ameri- can manuscripts and prints going up for auction at Swann on Feb. 4, which includes a first edition of “The Federalist Papers,” in which Alexander Ham- ilton, James Madison, and John Jay lay out their well-considered arguments in favor of the ratifica- tion of the Constitution. A sale of vintage posters on Feb. 11 offers such escapist pleasures as florid fin-de-siècle show posters—including one for “La Dame aux Camélias,”starring Sarah Bernhardt— and alluring Art Deco ads for glamorous Alpine destinations. (104 E. 25th St. 212-254-4710.) • Doyle holds one of its periodic auctions of decorations from the Belle Époque (Feb. 10), an offering led by Tiffany lamps, elaborate silver, and bronze fig- urines. The sale also includes a session dedicated to a subject dear to dowagers and country yeomen alike:1 dogs in art. (175 E. 87th St. 212-427-2730.) READINGS AND TALKS

“Muldoon’s Picnic” The fourth season of the talk series, hosted by The New Yorker’s poetry editor, Paul Muldoon, fea- ILLUSTRATION BY PABLO AMARGO PABLO BY ILLUSTRATION

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 31 FßD & DRINK 1 BAR TAB

Berlin 2 Avenue A One recent evening in Alphabet City, a clutch of twenty-somethings were looking for somewhere to grab a drink and, perhaps, a dance. “Berlin’s the new cool place,” one of them announced. “It’s full of beautiful boys—and models.” At the door, a behoodied man looked up from his iPhone. “It’s really packed down there,” he said. TABLES FOR TWO ends at fried potatoes, Llama Inn has you “Not sure if you guys are gonna get in.” Then he Llama Inn covered. One of two large-format plates stage-whispered into his handset, “I don’t know them.” Four or five nervous seconds passed. is a gorgeous brined, hickory-smoked, 50 Withers St., Brooklyn (718-387-3434) “O.K., you guys can go in.” At the bottom of the garlic-tinged bird, served chili-spiced stairs, in a barrel-vaulted watering hole, long ERIK RAMIREZ, a former sous-chef at skin intact, alongside a mountain of po- lines of people waited for the bathroom from whence burst ebullient gaggles of young women Eleven Madison Park, recently opened tato wedges roasted to a handsome crisp. and a madly coughing guy in a Thrasher hat. In a quirky portal to Lima, Peru, at a boho- The sauces on the side make it a party: the bar’s main concourse, young women swaddled swanky restaurant wedged under the a creamy queso-fresco concoction, a rich in Iris Apfel beads shuffled around with boys in punk jackets to the Ronettes and early Pulp. They shadow of the B.Q.E. in Williamsburg. rocoto-chili crema, and a green aji-pepper gulped Jameson and talked in low, serious voices While Ramirez’s roots in Manhattan’s sauce for a tiny bit of heat. A spectacu- about “Downton Abbey” and the bar’s co-owner, anointed temple of fine dining might lar lomo saltado, a stir-fry of tender beef Jesse Malin, who also stewards 2009’s favorite night spot, Cabin Down Below. A brand strate- strike fear in fans of the Peruvian- chunks in a thick soy-vinegar glaze, is gist said that the whole thing’s like being at one rotisserie-chicken chain Pio Pio (how showered with French fries and drizzled of those gallery parties where more people turned can you elevate such perfection?), Llama with more rocoto crema. As if that’s not up than expected, and noted, “The space is not properly equipped.” Looking over at a cluster of Inn turns out to be fun, unusual, a lit- enough (it is), it’s served with avocado, guys in wide-brimmed beige hats, a Vice staffer tle bit goofy, and extremely delicious. pickled chilis, and scallion pancakes, for shuddered: “Every time I see a hat like that, I The menu rides the waves of the making Chinese-Peruvian tacos. get paranoid that I’m at work.”—Nicolas Niarchos Spanish, French, Amerindian, Chinese, As befits the neighborhood, much and Japanese influences of the Peruvian attention is paid to the cocktails. The El melting pot. Anticuchos, the street snack Chapo doesn’t feel particularly louche, of grilled skewered meats, included, on a except that it’s basically a goblet of te- recent night, perfect little bites of char-siu quila, with a hint of pisco and citrus pork belly, topped with homemade pork (“Very spirit forward,” the server ofered rinds, and a wonderfully firm and forti- optimistically); the Flying Purple Pisco, fying beef heart. Fluke ceviche, with lime with purple-potato purée and frothed and red onion, was bright and assertive; egg whites, is like a tiny lavender-hued red-snapper tiradito, sliced into thin pieces soulé. Pisco buzz aside, maybe the and topped with unctuous persimmon and good vibes have something to do with lightly crunchy poppy seeds, was elegant, the catwalk of tropical plants ringing like fruity silk. Flouting the unspoken rule the walls of windows high above the that quinoa is a bummer, Ramirez mixes seats, or the earthy colors and fibres it with avocado, thick hunks of bacon, seemingly sourced from nature. Or caramelized bananas, and banana may- maybe it’s the feeling you get from all onnaise, resulting in a sort of improbably this lovely food prepared with unpre- irresistible banana-bacon pudding. tentious enthusiasm and home-town For those who believe that the cui- pride. (Plates $4-$48.)

sine of Peru starts at roast chicken and —Shauna Lyon SWARTE JOOST BRIAN REA; TOP: BY ILLUSTRATION BOTTOM: THE NEW YORKER; FOR AMY LOMBARD BY PHOTOGRAPH

32 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016

THE TALK OF THE TOWN

COMMENT LIVING ON THE EDGE

T’S UPON us. About one half of one per cent of all regis- cures were forerunners of today’s ideas for limiting campaign I tered voters in the United States—ninety-six per cent of funds and drawing congressional districts in nonpartisan ways. them likely to be white, a hundred per cent certain to live The struggle between bossism and reform never ends. As in Iowa or New Hampshire—will now exercise their in- late as 1968, Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey became alienable, God-given, legally mandated right to choose the the Democratic Presidential nominee without entering a sin- Presidential nominees of the two parties. Since the advent gle primary. (The Party then created a commission, led by Sen- of the New Hampshire primary and the Iowa caucus as we ator George McGovern, to democratize the process—one re- know them, in the nineteen-fifties and seventies, respec- sult was the Iowa caucus.) More recently, Republican Party tively, no one has been elected President without winning leaders have had their way in election after election, with the one or the other—except Bill Clinton, whose second-place nomination going to establishment candidates named Bush, finish in New Hampshire, in 1992, amid various scandals, Dole, McCain, and Romney, regardless of the populist erup- was a victory over expectations, and proved that he was in- tions of the moment. Perhaps 2016 will be diferent. defatigable. So is the political hegemony of these two small- Now that we’re entering the frenetic, relentlessly tactical ish, non-representative states. If the Presidential-nominat- stretch of the campaign, it’s strange to think that the long ing process were an international sports competition, one months before Iowa and New Hampshire actually marked would assume that top oicials of both parties were tak- the substantive phase. Candidates had to show up for lengthy ing envelopes of cash from town chairs in Durham and debates (even if their answers often ranged from the canned precinct captains in Waterloo. But, amazingly, all this out- to the preposterous). Every now and then, they gave speeches sized clout comes free. and issued position papers on issues like tax reform and war Direct primaries—the selection of candidates by voters in the Middle East (even if their ideas didn’t always stand instead of by party leaders—came into existence a hundred up to fact-checking or common sense). And, because the years ago. They were the inspiration of reformers who wanted candidates were spending so much time in just two states, to take power away from political ma- they had to face questions from actual chines and corporate interests, and re- voters. As a result of all this, we now turn it to the people, who were believed have a reading of the American polit- to be wiser and more capable than the ical temperature. What we’ve learned bosses, because they were less self-inter- is that it’s burning a lot hotter at the ested. The act of voting would turn or- grass roots than either party’s leader- dinary people into good citizens. “The ship seems capable of understanding. direct primary will lower party respon- Neither billionaire donors nor the sibility. In its stead it establishes indi- Republican National Committee nor vidual responsibility,” George W. Nor- Fox News has been able to mute Donald ris, a Progressive senator from Nebraska, Trump and his millions of supporters. wrote in 1923. “It lessens party spirit Politico notes that “establishment Re- and decreases partisanship.” In many publicans have begun a ferocious round ways, the Progressive era anticipated of finger-pointing over who is to blame our own. The concerns about plutoc- for the party’s failure to stop Donald racy, political corruption, technologi- Trump.” Should Right to Rise, the hun- cal change, and mass immigration were dred-million-dollar Bush Super PAC,

ILLUSTRATIONS BY TOM BACHTELL TOM BY ILLUSTRATIONS similar, and the reformers’ high-minded have directed its dollars against Trump

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 35 instead of against Marco Rubio? Should Rubio have been against the powers they see concentrated against them— more willing to criticize Trump, and Ted Cruz less willing big business, big government, big media, big globalization. to flatter him? Which is preferable: fear (Trump) or loath- That was the original purpose of direct primaries—to ing (Cruz)? The latter, says a recent issue of National Review force the parties to answer to the voters. But Senator Norris that was wholly and belatedly devoted to stopping Trump. was mistaken about one thing: the voters turn out to be more Bob Dole sees it the other way around. The Party leadership partisan than the bosses. Primaries drive politicians toward expected the primaries to proceed as a kind of demonstra- the extremes, and neither side is willing to acknowledge the tion of democracy, with the result already in the bag. Shock legitimacy or, in a sense, the existence of the other. Sanders is finally giving way to rage. Democrats cheer his proposals for higher taxes, single-payer Democrats are more used to choosing outsiders, like Jimmy health care, and free college education without demanding Carter and Barack Obama. But the long-shot campaign of that he explain how he’ll get those proposals through a highly Bernie Sanders is the opposite of those insurgencies—it has ideological Republican Congress. Trump just tells his faith- nothing to do with personality or biography and everything ful to give him the power and he’ll make everything right, to do with issues. Sanders’s persistently surprising popularity and they believe him. Cruz sneers about “New York values,” shows that the Democratic establishment grasped the deep as if support for gun control and abortion rights weren’t ma- alienation of its voters no better than its Republican coun- jority views in America. terpart did. The energy of this campaign has been gener- These disruptions have troubled the former New York ated on the margins, by two kinds of Americans: younger, mayor Michael Bloomberg enough to make him consider an better-educated, more urban ones on the Democratic side; independent candidacy. He disapproves of partisan primaries. older, more working-class, whiter ones on the Republican An aide told the Times that Bloomberg thinks that Amer- side. As with the Progressives and Populists of a hundred icans are seeking “a non-ideological, bipartisan, results-ori- years ago, both groups harbor a sense that their country has ented vision.” He would spend at least a billion of his own been taken away from them. Neither has traditionally been dollars to find out. Nothing about the campaign so far sug- oppressed, which makes the sense of disenfranchisement all gests that he would get much of a return on the investment. the more acute, and they assert increasingly extreme views —George Packer

PARIS POSTCARD Crunch called “probably the biggest hoax of your most recent meal yourself.” Judg- DOG’S DINNER in the history of Facebook,” he managed ing from the comments section, diners to convince much of the French media were not entirely won over. “Impossible that he had been elected the president for me, I’d be too ashamed,” one wrote. of Facebook, but this was the real deal.) Another declared, “The ‘mutt bag’ in His issue is le gaspillage alimentaire—food which you mix starter, main course, and waste. Le Monde recently called him an dessert?? If I give him that, my dog is “hyperactiviste” for the cause. Two weeks going to bite me!!!” HE LATEST stage in the decline of earlier, a law for which he had lobbied Derambarsh acknowledged that, T French civilization began in the tirelessly—petitioning lawmakers and among his countrymen, the doggy bag summer of 2009 at a Thai restaurant posing with cast-of carrots—went into sufered a stigma: “People think it means in Los Angeles. Arash Derambarsh, a efect, requiring French restaurants that that you’re hungry or you’re poor.” book editor and criminology student in produce more than ten metric tons of food The proprietor of the café—belly, Paris, was visiting his twin brother, Sia, waste a year to recycle their scraps. Last suspenders, glasses on a cord—sidled who was in California working in film year, Derambarsh successfully promoted up to the table. He knew Derambarsh, production. Derambarsh ordered chicken a measure obliging supermarkets to do- a regular. He said that he had over- curry. It arrived in a bowl big enough nate unsold food to charity. The recent heard a snippet of the conversation. to mix a cake. “After that long flight, I legislation merely suggested that restaura- couldn’t eat it all,” Derambarsh recalled. teurs ofer to-go containers to clients, but “So my brother asked me, ‘You want a word had circulated, instantly becoming doggy bag?’ I thought, Is he talking about urban legend: doggy bags à l’américaine ‘Reservoir Dogs’? My brother said, ‘No, were now mandatory in France. Arash, here in the United States, when “The literal translation is sac à chien,” someone can’t finish his meal he takes it Sud-Ouest explained, in a tutorial. “It’s home in a doggy bag and eats it at 2 A.M.’ ” a bag in which the client of a restau- Derambarsh was sitting in a café in rant wraps up the food that he hasn’t the Seventh Arrondissement of Paris, finished, in order to serve it to his dog steak and potatoes steaming in front of once he gets home. This practice is very him. In 2014, he added local politician to well known in Anglo-Saxon and Asian his professional portfolio, winning a seat countries, but still in the embryonic stage on the city council of the Paris suburb in France. Of course, if you don’t have a of Courbevoie. (In 2008, in what Tech- dog, you can also consume the remains

36 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 “Between us, it’s not real, this law,” anything so informal. When she came her a question. She told about a “Perry he whispered. back to her native borough last week Mason” episode she saw as a girl, and An American fond of takeout vessels in for an Evening of Conversation at the how impressed she was when Ham- all their forms—pizza boxes, oyster pails, Bronx Defenders, a nonprofit organi- ilton Burger, the D.A. who lost every aluminum-foil swans—asked how many zation on East 161st Street that pro- week, said he was proud of doing the doggy bags he’d given out. vides attorneys for about half the in- right thing when the guilty were con- “One, since the beginning of the year,” digent defendants in the Bronx, the victed and the innocent set free. That he said. “Without doubt, foreigners.” He executive director, Robin Steinberg, made her interested in becoming a dis- paused for the punch line. “And it was greeted her and nearly fainted to see trict attorney, and early in her career salad that they took. Fuck, salad!” her, live and in person. The Justice she did become one, after a chance Derambarsh couldn’t help taking the wore mostly black—black capelike encounter with the Manhattan D.A. debate to the adjacent table, where a dis- coat with dark imitation-fur collar, at the time, Robert Morgenthau, on tinguished-looking woman was eating black dress, and an unbuttoned black a cheese line at a reception. “You may (a salad) by herself. below-the-knee sweater with two hor- have your career all planned out, but “What do you think?” he said. izontal white stripes. Her face and when a chance comes you have to be “I adore the U.S. and I adore doggy hands stood out as in an old, mostly flexible enough to jump.” bags,” she answered. dark painting. She said that her confirmation hear- She was a professor of English, it turned The Bronx Defenders provides help ings were a horrible experience and re- out, who’d seen her first doggy bag (bar- for its clients not only in criminal cases ally got her down, but she discovered a becued ribs) on a pier in San Francisco but in all kinds of situations that in- lot about the rest of the country during around 1979. “It didn’t exist chez nous,” volve encounters with bureaucracy. her one-on-one interviews with sena- she recalled. “Americans are pragmatic, When a person gets arrested, he or tors. “I learned what a big issue water but the French are very conservative.” she might also lose child custody, food rights are out west,” she said. “That’s In addition to being tacky, the doggy stamps, housing, etc. The organiza- not something we think about in New bag, its opponents argue, devalues the tion takes what it calls a holistic ap- York.” Sotomayor said that after she work of the chef. A person who puts his proach to fixing its clients’ problems. won confirmation, and Elena Kagan leftovers in a hot car might get food poi- Two hundred and fifty people, most followed her, President Obama asked soning. Consider tartares, seafood, choc- of them young, do this work. The Jus- Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “Are you olate mousses, dishes with mayonnaise! tice walked through the oices, with happy with the two sisters I brought Restaurateurs could be sued. To combat an entourage. A woman named Ash- you?” Ginsburg replied, “I’m very, very such worries, the Ministry of Agriculture ley Guzman shook her hand. Guz- happy. But I’ll be even happier when has come up with a name change: le gour- man had spent the day trying to find you give me five more.” met bag, “a new appellation, more presti- better housing for a homeless woman To a question about whether she gious and gourmande.” who was about to get an operation. had a mantra she used for empower- “The doggy bag won’t change the The Justice smiled and leaned toward ment, Sotomayor answered that she is world, but the supermarket law will,” De- Guzman and asked what her job was. not a religious fanatic, but sometimes rambarsh asserted. He said that he would “I’m a legal advocate,” Guzman replied. in her job she says “Oh, my God, help like Barack Obama to pass the same law “Legal advocate,” the Justice repeated. me!” and means it. Sometimes one of in the U.S. Then, with a penetrating gaze, she her colleagues drives her crazy. If certain Derambarsh ordered an espresso. He said, “What does that mean?” Guz- colleagues are acrimonious in their mi- didn’t ask for a doggy bag. His entrecôte man explained, and the Justice lis- nority opinions, she makes allowances, was history. Neither did the American, tened, nodding. because she knows they’re unhappy that who had cleaned her plate down to the An audience of a hundred and they lost, and they are passionate about last caper. fifty invitees—students, lawyers, a city their beliefs. She tries to get along with —Lauren Collins councilwoman, Bronx Defenders staf all her colleagues, even the ones she usu- 1 and clients—waited in a nearby recep- ally disagrees with, because “we’re going HOMECOMING tion area for the Q. & A. session. “It to be there for a long time.” SONIA FROM THE BRONX will just be a minute. We are getting Most of the people at the event the Justice miked,” Steinberg told the had never seen a Supreme Court Jus- assembly. Then Sotomayor appeared, tice in person before. At a dinner for to huge applause. During Steinberg’s thirty-five guests afterward, the Jus- intro, the Justice sat in an armchair tice went around the table and talked on a small dais and rested her hands to each person. A man who had once at the ends of the chair arms, judge met a Justice’s brother asked whether ONIA SOTOMAYOR, Associate Justice of style. But when she began to talk, in she remembered the first Justice she S the U.S. Supreme Court, says that an unmistakable Bronx accent, she ever met. “What an interesting ques- she prefers to be called Sonia from moved and gestured and made jokes tion!” Sotomayor said. “Hmm. Let me the Bronx. Chances are nobody who and ended by walking around in the think.” She crossed her arms and looked meets her ever dreams of calling her audience right up to anyone who asked of into the distance, and everyone in

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 37 the vicinity held their breath in the The timing could have been worse, but None of this is incidental, but what presence of such an amazing qual- not much. He was far behind schedule makes the Met show beguiling is its ity of thinking. (Answer: Chief Jus- on “Matthias Buchinger: ‘The Greatest focus on Buchinger’s breathtaking gifts tice William Rehnquist, many years German Living,’ ” a biography-slash-col- as a calligrapher—more to the point, a ago, at a law-related social gathering.) lecting memoir-slash-catalogue. With micro-calligrapher. Among the twenty- —Ian Frazier no choice but to persevere, he did, some- six works from Jay’s collection, for in- 1 times dictating, otherwise typing with stance, is an engraving based upon a DEPT. OF ENTHUSIASMS two fingers, as the wrist healed. Two self-portrait, approximately eight by SLEIGHT OF NO HANDS surgeries, one titanium plate, and seven twelve inches, from 1724. Hidden within screws later, the book has just been pub- the curls of Buchinger’s periwig are seven lished, and Jay is back to polishing his complete Psalms and the Lord’s Prayer. sleight-of-hand chops. Old dictum, The words are barely legible without new iteration: as with a magical efect, a magnifying glass. Jay has uncovered when snow clouds materialize nothing no evidence that Buchinger used one should be left to chance. himself. S THE Blizzard of ’16 approached the Buchinger himself never experienced One recent morning, Jay guided some A city gate, Ricky Jay, the sui-generis the luxury of a broken wrist. Born near friends through the gallery. Freyda Spira, conjurer, scholar, storyteller, actor, anti- Nuremberg in 1674, he congenitally the show’s curator, had included sev- quarian collector, and incorrigible perfec- lacked hands and feet. One of his arms enty-odd works, spanning eight centu- tionist, knew what not to do. A couple of terminated just below the elbow, the ries, by other artists who deployed let- weeks earlier, he and his wife, Chrisann other above where an elbow should ters and words. A couple named Bob Verges, had arrived from Los Angeles at have been, and his legs stopped at mid- and Susan Halpern (“This just caught their pied-à-terre on the Upper West thigh. He was twenty-nine inches tall our eye on the way to the Egyptians”) Side. They’d been all over town, and the yet manifestly a giant. Somehow—Jay’s studied a page of fourteenth-century only remaining item of business before biography, though it comes as close as Hebrew calligraphy, and Jay accom- heading home was the opening party, a any source to explaining the how of how, panied them across the room to three few days later, of “Wordplay: Matthias still leaves a reader at the intersection drawings by a contemporary Israeli Buchinger’s Drawings from the Collec- of belief and disbelief—he did magic artist, Jacob El Hanani, whose densely tion of Ricky Jay,” at the Metropolitan (specialty: cups-and-balls), played several inscribed Hebrew micrography rivals Museum of Art. The more Fargo-like instruments (dulcimer, trumpet, flute), Buchinger’s infinitesimal Biblical pas- the view from the living-room window, trick-shot with pistols, demonstrated sages. (El Hanani, however, has hands.) the more determined Jay was to stay put exquisite ball control at skittles, danced After holding a magnifying glass a until it felt safe to summon Uber. the hornpipe on his leather-encased few inches from one El Hanani piece, On an icy, windy morning last win- stumps, married four times, and sired Bob Halpern said, “I can’t see bubkes.” ter, a misstep on Lafayette Street had fourteen children (proof, as Jay noted in Time for lunch. In the Members Din- left him with a fractured rib and, more “Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women,” ing Room, Jay found a table that allowed consequentially, a fractured right wrist. of “one fully operative appendage”). him to sit with his back to the wall, and, as he studied a Buchinger-themed tasting menu, Thomas Campbell, the Met’s di- rector, stopped by. “Ricky, hi,” Campbell said. “Your show is a runaway success.” “How nice,” Jay said. “Sorry to interrupt you,” Campbell said. “I’ll be seated right over here, eaves- dropping on your conversation.” The first course arrived—smoked sturgeon with crème fraîche and cav- iar—followed by skate schnitzel with red cabbage, juniper, and quince. After a couple of bites, Jay said, “It’s the best skate schnitzel I’ve ever had. Not that I can say I like it.” He took a pencil-thin breadstick from a basket. “Buchinger loved these,” he said, and dipped it in a green brocco- li-rabe pesto. “It’s not a very good bread- stick. But as a writing instrument it has possibilities.” —Mark Singer

THE FINANCIAL PAGE an economic downturn in the U.S.? No: the U.S. economy TANKING continued to motor along for years afterward. The folly of reading too much into oil prices is that they are tremendously volatile, often driven more by the industry’s internal dynamics than by the economy at large. Boom-and- bust cycles are common in the industry, as it goes from over- production to steep cuts and back again. The most plausible AST MONDAY was all too typical of this year’s stock-market explanation for the drop in oil prices over the past nineteen L mayhem. Although a rally at the end of the previous week months, in fact, has nothing to do with weak demand. As had raised investors’ hopes, the major indexes opened down Ethan Harris, the co-head of global research at Bank Amer- and slid lower as the day progressed. By the market’s close, the ica Merrill Lynch, points out, “Over this entire period, global S. & P. 500 had dropped 1.56 per cent, leaving it down eight oil consumption has been growing at a solid pace, with no per cent on the year. But there was something odd. The slide sign of a slowdown.” Instead, prices have fallen because of had not been occasioned by bad news on the corporate front; a huge increase in supply, thanks to various factors, includ- earnings reports were generally good. Nor was it a reaction to ing the boom in shale-oil production in the U.S., the revi- trouble in China, which has been a major source of anxiety for talization of Iraq’s oil industry, and, most recently, the lift- investors; the Shanghai index had finished up. Rather, the de- ing of sanctions on Iran. cline was a response to just one fact: the price of oil had fallen Investors aren’t just worried that oil is the canary in the more than five per cent, to just above global coal mine, though. They’re also thirty dollars a barrel. These days, as oil worried that low oil prices are, in them- goes, so goes the stock market. selves, hurting the U.S. economy. For Since December, there’s been a nearly instance, as oil prices have plummeted, ninety-per-cent correlation between shale-oil drillers have sharply reduced oil prices and stock prices. When oil their investments, and that has hit places has dropped, stocks have followed, and like North Dakota and Oklahoma hard. when oil prices have stabilized, stocks These setbacks are real, but they should have tended to rise. This is historically be seen in proportion. Even after the unusual, and it’s confusing, too. There shale revolution, the U.S. is still very are only a few parts of the stock mar- much a net consumer of oil, importing ket where cheap oil is legitimately bad five million more barrels of oil a day than news—oil producers and suppliers, ob- it exports. That means that the drop in viously, and also banks that have lent oil prices has amounted to a windfall for money to American shale-oil drillers. consumers—one that Harris estimates For most companies, though, cheap en- saved them a hundred and ninety bil- ergy is a boon. It lowers operating costs lion dollars over the past six quarters. In and gives consumers more money to other words, cheap oil means Americans spend. Yet even companies that reap have an extra ten billion dollars in their huge benefits from cheap oil are currently taking a beating. pockets every month. And that’s translating into higher con- Airline stocks have tracked the price of oil almost perfectly, sumer spending: an October study by the JPMorgan Chase even though cheap oil saved the four major American car- Institute found that consumers spent around seventy to ninety riers more than eleven billion dollars last year. cents of every dollar they saved from lower gas prices. Har- So why does the market see cheap oil as a curse rather ris told me, “The negative impacts of low oil prices are very than as a blessing? There are a couple of reasons. First, in- visible—the collapse of investment, the struggling compa- vestors fear that oil prices are telling us something impor- nies—while the positive impacts are very subtle.” But that tant about the state of the global economy. The idea is that doesn’t make the benefits less significant. As Harris says, oil is cheap because global demand—and, in particular, de- “The long-run story is clear: the U.S. is better of with low, mand from China—is weak. This sounds plausible, but the rather than high, oil prices.” oil market is an incredibly cloudy crystal ball. Take the sum- In fundamental terms, then, the stock market’s oil obsession mer of 2008. At the time, the global economy was already in is hard to justify. The problem is that, once a pattern gets es- recession, thanks to the bursting of the housing bubble. Yet, tablished in the market, it can take on a life of its own. After week after week, oil prices kept climbing, peaking at a rec- all, if you think that everyone else is planning to sell when oil ord hundred and forty-seven dollars a barrel. Oil prices re- prices fall, then you’re probably getting ready to do so yourself. vealed nothing at all about future demand, which was about That’s especially true during periods of uncertainty about the to collapse; they were disconnected from what was happening state of the economy. At such times, the herd instinct takes in the global economy. One could tell a similar story about over. The oil market is far more noise than signal. But right 1986, when oil prices tumbled by almost seventy per cent in now it’s the only sound that investors seem able to hear. the space of four months. Was that decline a harbinger of —James Surowiecki CHRISTOPH NIEMANN CHRISTOPH

40 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016

Instead, she went to boarding school, PERSONAL HISTORY wrote a thesis on Balzac, and became a teacher. I felt grateful to Atatürk that my parents were so well educated, that COVER STORY they weren’t held back by superstition or religion, that they were true scien- The head scarf, modern Turkey, and me. tists, who taught me how to read when I was three and never doubted that I BY ELIF BATUMAN could become a writer. My father grew up in Adana, not far from the Syrian border. His family was Alevi—part of Turkey’s Shia minority— and one of his earliest memories was waking up to hear his grandfather re- citing the Koran in Arabic. My father experienced his first religious doubts at the age of twelve, when he discovered Bergson and Comte in an Adana book- store, and read that religion was part of a primitive and pre-scientific state of civilization; he has been an atheist since his teens. My mother grew up in Ankara, Atatürk’s capital. Her father, one of the civil engineers who helped to modernize Anatolia, was politically a staunch secularist and privately a de- vout Muslim (though not a proponent of head scarves, which nobody in the family wore). In grade school, my mother read what the Koran said about skep- tics—that God would close their eyes and ears—and got so depressed that she didn’t get out of bed for two days. Her parents told her that God was more mer- ciful than she thought, and that people who did good would go to Heaven on the Day of Judgment, regardless of what they believed. I have always known my mother as an agnostic, less certain than my father that the universe hadn’t been N 1924, a year after founding the Turk- with a brim. The Ottoman Arabic script created by some great intelligence. But I ish Republic on the ruins of the Ot- was replaced by a Latin alphabet, and she would get even more annoyed than toman Empire, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the language itself was “cleansed” of Ar- my father did when she thought that the country’s new leader, abolished the abic and Persian elements. people were invoking God to do their Ottoman Caliphate, which had been At the time, my grandparents were jobs for them—for example, when she the last remaining Sunni Islamic Ca- either very young or not yet born. Only saw a bus with a sticker saying “Allah liphate since 1517. Having introduced a my mother’s father was old enough to Protect Us.” secular constitution and a Western-style remember throwing his fez in the air on Both my parents always told me that, civil and criminal legal code, Atatürk the Sultan’s birthday. My parents were in order to be a good person, it was nei- shut down the dervish lodges and reli- born into a secular country. They met ther necessary nor desirable to believe gious schools, abolished polygamy, and in Turkey’s top medical school, moved in God; it was more noble and eicient introduced civil marriage and a national to America in the nineteen-seventies, to do good for disinterested reasons, beauty contest. He granted women the and became researchers and professors. without thoughts of Heaven. Nothing right to vote, to hold property, to become Both were, and continue to be, pas- in the milieu where I grew up, in New supreme-court justices, and to run for sionate supporters of Atatürk. I grew Jersey in the eighties and early nineties, oice. The head scarf was discouraged. up hearing that if it hadn’t been for contradicted the idea I formed of reli- A notorious 1925 “Hat Law” outlawed Atatürk my grandmother would have gion as something unnecessary, unsci- the fez and turban; the only acceptable been “a covered person” who would have entific, provincial—essentially, uncool. male headgear was a Western-style hat been reliant on a man for her livelihood. For a long time, I thought there was an

42 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 ILLUSTRATION BY ANNA PARINI immutable link between coolness and For my part, I wasn’t sure what to think. positivism. I thought this was the way Unlike them, I was educated in America. of the world. Then came identity pol- To me, as to most Americans, it seemed itics and, in Turkey, the rise of the Jus- a tiny bit weird that nearly every pub- tice and Development Party (A.K.P.), lic building in Turkey had a picture of a center-right party with Islamist roots. Atatürk on the wall. I also knew that, Its charismatic leader, Recep Tayyip Er- in order for the Turkish Republic to doğan, has been the head of state since succeed, millions of people had been 2003, after the A.K.P. won its first land- obliged to change their language, their slide victory clothes, and their way of life, all at once, Suddenly, it was the secularists who because Atatürk said so. I knew that peo- seemed stodgy: racist, authoritarian, ple who had been perceived as threats élitist, and slavishly pro-Western. The to the state—religious leaders, Marx- Times started referring to them as “the ists, Kurds, Greeks, Armenians—were secular elite.” In 2007, the Times re- deported, exiled, imprisoned, tortured, ported that a protest of the A.K.P. by or killed. I knew that, even at the start hundreds of thousands of Turkish sec- of the twenty-first century, there still ularists was motivated in part by a “fear” weren’t enough checks on the military, of the life styles of their more religious and that women who wore head scarves compatriots—by “snobbish” complaints were subject to discrimination, barred that “religious Turks were uneducated from certain jobs and universities. and poor” and that “their pesky prayer Furthermore, when I thought about rugs got underfoot in hospital halls.” It’s my own family, something about White’s diicult to imagine the Times report- critique of Kemalism felt familiar: the ing in an equally condescending man- sense of embattlement and paranoia. ner about the élitism of Americans who Kemalism, not unlike Zionism, drew oppose the Christian right. The Western much of its energy from the fact that view of Erdoğan eventually soured, es- there could easily have been no Turkish pecially after the Gezi protests of 2013; state. At the end of the First World War, he was criticized for alleged corruption the victorious Allied powers assumed and for increasingly authoritarian tactics control over nearly all Anatolia; they toward journalists and opposition par- divided some of it up into British and ties. But for a number of years all my French mandates, and parcelled much American liberal friends who had any of the rest out to the Greeks, the Ar- opinion at all on Turkey were pro-Er- menians, and the Kurds. Before Atatürk doğan. They thought it had been un- was a lawmaker, he was a military com- sustainable for Turkey to repress and mander, the leader of the Turkish War deny its religion for so long—that the of Independence; and, from a military people had finally spoken out. perspective, all those people and na- Many spoke warmly of the anthro- tions were anti-Turkish (as were the pologist Jenny White, an important Arabs, who supported Britain in the scholar of modern Turkey whose book First World War). My parents always “Muslim Nationalism and the New dreamed of a post-nationalist world; Turks” characterizes the pro-Atatürk as a small child, my mother prayed to Kemalist culture as one of “militarism, Allah every night that the United Na- hostility, suspicion, and authoritarianism” tions would be formed and there would rooted in “blood-based Turkish ethnic- be no more countries or wars. At the ity.” Muslim nationalism, by contrast, has same time, I remember being warned sought to replace “historically embattled as a child that there were anti-Turkish Republican borders” with “more flexible people in the world, people who held Ottoman imperial boundaries” and to old grudges and could cause problems. “privilege Muslim identity and culture For a while, Erdoğan really did seem over race.” In the A.K.P.-sympathetic to be trying to counter this kind of ad- world view, the Ottomans, whom Ke- versarial thinking—to open up business malists had blamed for selling Turkey to and diplomatic relations with Turkey’s the British, enjoyed a vogue as models neighbors, to lift the taboos on men- of enlightened Muslim multiculturalism. tioning the “Kurdish issue” and the Ar- I could see that every slight to Ke- menian genocide. Under the A.K.P., a malism was a knife in my parents’ hearts. Kurdish-language channel débuted on

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 43 Turkish national television; in 2009, Erdoğan went on the air and expressed good wishes in Kurdish. This would have ON FRIENDSHIP been unthinkable a short time earlier. If a friend calls out to you late at night from beneath your window N 2010, I moved to Istanbul, where I Never send him on his way. And if you’ve sent him away and still I taught at a university and reported for Insist on rigid rules, regain your composure after a moment this magazine for three years. I found And run to the window and shout his name: “Come, Merhav! that, much like America, Turkey was Come back! I’ve got some corn cooking! Come eat something.” polarizing into two camps that were And he’ll placidly retrace his steps and gladly accept increasingly unable to communicate The key you toss down from your window, with each other. There was a new di- Will come upstairs to the first floor and will be impressed chotomy I had never heard of before: By the large pictures on the walls. the “white Turks” (Westernized secu- He’ll sit and wait for you to slip into a clean shirt and you’ll put on lar élites in Istanbul and Ankara) ver- The movie in the kid’s room and your baby daughter sus the “black Turks” (the pious Mus- Will rush to the kitchen and come back with a red pepper for him. lim middle and lower-middle classes He’ll decline the warm corn and say he’s already had dinner. of Anatolia). The black Turks were the In the meantime your husband will chat with him about Tai Chi underdogs, while the white Turks were And pour him a glass of cold sweet pineapple juice. the racists who despised them. Jenny You’ll return to the living room White writes, “The term ‘Black Turk’ And go out to the balcony and light a cigarette and sip is used by Kemalists to disparage Turks A cold beer. You don’t yet realize of lower-class or peasant heritage, who That this is a sublime moment in your life. are considered to be uncivilized, patri- One of the most sublime you’ll ever know. archal, not modern, and mired in Islam, even if they have moved into the mid- —Hagit Grossman dle class.” Erdoğan proudly declared (Translated, from the Hebrew, by Benjamin Balint.) that he was a black Turk. The black and white breakdown was diicult for me to understand. My moth- points in the city, you could hear the ers who took the time to explain to me er’s family—fair-skinned Ankara pro- competing calls from several mosques how great the head scarf was—how it fessionals who once had a chaufeur going of at the same time, five times a was “actually a beautiful thing.” For a and a gardener—clearly fit the “white” day. Often, when I was walking around woman to cover her head, they said, profile. My father’s relatives in Adana the city, I liked hearing the call to prayer. was in fact a feminist gesture, because were generally less educated and darker- Some people were really good at it. (My it made clear she was demanding re- complexioned. His father owned a store mother had often told me that when her spect. There weren’t the same misun- that sold textile dye to shepherds. There father was a boy he had such a beauti- derstandings as with a woman whose was a brief time when my father wore ful voice and knew the prayer so well head was uncovered. a mustache. Yet my father had written that he would fill in when the regular I usually didn’t reply, especially if the the essay in praise of Atatürk in his muezzin was sick.) Still, when I was at driver seemed at all excitable, because high-school yearbook, his sisters were home with the windows closed, work- when those drivers started to argue they pro-choice, none of the women in his ing or trying to have a conversation, the would stop watching the road, and a lot family wore head scarves except to do sound of amplified male voices extolling of the cabs didn’t have seat belts. But housework, and I had never heard any Islam always felt somehow invasive. “I once, when a driver pressed me particu- of them express the remotest hint of know I sound like an asshole, but I re- larly jovially for an opinion, I said some- nostalgia for the Ottoman past. I had ally get mad sometimes,” I confessed to thing like “I think all women should heard relatives on both sides of my fam- my friend. “Oh, no, are you an Islam- be respected. It shouldn’t depend on ily worry that, if Atatürk’s reforms were ophobe?” he said playfully. He advised their hair.” undone, Turkey could end up “like Iran.” me to think of the imam as “a singer, The driver replied that I was ab- So who were my father’s family—also like Michael Jackson.” solutely right, that of course women white Turks? should be respected, and that the head In Istanbul, I became careful about ECAUSE I spoke Turkish imperfectly, scarf was the best way for women to re- how I talked, careful not to sound—not B smiled a lot, and often travelled mind men of this necessity for respect. to be—Orientalist or Islamophobic. One alone, I got a lot of lectures from men, Men, after all, were worse than women: evening, while I was hanging out at my particularly taxi-drivers. Some were sec- they could sometimes forget themselves, apartment with a Turkish friend, our ularists; others, those with the most re- and then unfortunate things could hap- conversation was interrupted by the call ligious paraphernalia in their cars, didn’t pen, “even”—he said in a hushed voice, to prayer, which was amplified by loud- try to make conversation. That still left adding that he didn’t like to mention speakers. In my apartment, as in most many outgoing, casually Muslim driv- such things in front of me—“even rape.”

44 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 I replied, in my simplistic Turkish, that to me this sounded like a threat: ei- ther cover your head or rape can happen. The driver protested in ornate phrases that nobody was threatening anyone, that to speak of threats in this situa- tion was unfitting, that he could tell from my smiling face that I was a good and trusting person, but that the world was an imperfect place, that some men were less like humans than like animals, and that it was best to send clear signals about what one was or wasn’t looking for. Then he left me at the fish restau- rant where I was going to meet some literature professors. If it had been just the two of us in the taxi in a political vacuum, I wouldn’t have begrudged the driver his opinions. It was his car and his country, and he was driving me where I wanted to go. I knew that my limited Turkish, which felt like such a handicap, was in his eyes a marker of privilege—a sign that I could aford to travel and live abroad. Often, the second question drivers asked, after the invariable “Where are you from?,” was “How much did the plane ticket cost?” But the cab wasn’t in a vacuum; it was in a country where the head of state, whose wife wore a head scarf, repeatedly urged all women to have at least three children, preferably four or five. Erdoğan opposed abortion, birth control, and Ce- sarean section. He said that Islam had set out a clear position for women, but that you couldn’t explain it to feminists, because they “don’t accept the concept of motherhood.” The longer he stayed in oice, the more outspoken he became. In 2014, he went so far as to describe birth control as “treason” designed “to dry up our bloodline.” No matter how hard I tried to be tolerant—no matter how sympathetic I felt toward Muslim feminists who didn’t want to be “liber- ated” from the veil, and who felt just as judged by the secularist establishment as secular women felt by the Muslim pa- triarchy—I could never forgive Erdoğan for saying those things about women. And, because he said them in the name of Islam, I couldn’t forgive Islam, either.

N THE fall of 2011, I travelled to south- I eastern Anatolia to report on a newly discovered Neolithic site that arche- ologists thought might have been the world’s first temple. The site, Göbekli

were two or three families sitting up there, with children. The remaining tables were empty. I sat at a table for four people, in a corner. The families had a lot of requests, and I was unable to get the waiter’s attention. I had been sitting there for several minutes when I got a phone call from a friend in Is- tanbul. When I started talking, in En- glish, two of the women at a nearby table turned and stared at me, open- mouthed. I thought that maybe they thought I was being rude for talking on a cell phone. “I’ll call you back,” I told my friend. Even after I hung up, the women didn’t stop staring. I tried smiling and waving, but they neither waved back nor looked away. The waiter, who still hadn’t taken my order, was standing in a cor- ner gazing up at a ceiling-mounted TV. I gave up and went back to my hotel room, where I ate tahini rolls while read- “Your appointment’s been cancelled. You took ing about the Neolithic Revolution. too long filling out those forms.” HE MAIN tourist and religious sites in T Urfa—an ancient castle, numerous •• mosques, a cave where Abraham may have been born and suckled by a deer Tepe, was near the city of Urfa, a Mus- hitchhike. Thinking that life might be for ten years, and a lake of sacred carp lim holy destination, believed to be the easier if I had my own car, I made an believed to mark the spot where Nim- birthplace of Abraham. (The town, near appointment for six the next evening at rod tried to burn Abraham alive (God the Syrian border, is now one of the a Europcar location supposedly on Urfa’s turned the cinders into fish) are all in or points through which foreign fighters 749 Street. I got so lost that, by seven, I around a shady green park, with foun- pass in order to join ISIS.) I seemed to was still wandering up and down a mys- tains and rosebushes. I went there every be the only unaccompanied woman at terious stretch of road that seemed to day to escape the heat. Women had to my hotel. When I told the clerk I was start out as 771 Street and then to be- wear head scarves at the holy sites, so staying for six days, he almost had a come, without any visible change, 764 I bought one at the market and always heart attack. “Six days?” he repeated. “All Street. I had walked several times past kept it in my bag. It was soft, gauzy, by yourself?” When I asked about the the same convenience store, catching spring green, with a pattern of tiny in- hours of the steam bath, he said it was the attention of a bread-delivery man. tricate vines and leaves. for men only—not just at that time of “Are you looking for something?” the One day, when I had been visiting day but all the time. I took the elevator deliveryman asked. I showed him the Abraham’s cave, I forgot to take the scarf up to my room, filled with the depress- address. He showed it to another guy. of. Walking back through the park, I ing knowledge that there would be no They debated for a long time whether almost immediately felt that something alcohol in the minibar. All the time I there was or was not a 749 Street. A third was diferent. I passed two beautiful was in Urfa, whenever I saw any mem- guy came out of the store and joined young women in scarves, walking arm- ber of the hotel staf in the halls or the in the conversation. I waited for a few in-arm and laughing about something. lobby, I always received the same greet- minutes, but it was clear that they were When I looked at them, they looked ing: “Oh, you’re still here?” never going to agree, and, anyway, the right back into my face and met my I had a hard time finding a taxi to Europcar was already closed. I thanked eyes, still smiling, as if we were all in take me to the archeological site. In the them for their help and walked back to the presence of a great joke. I realized end, the hotel receptionist called a driver the city center to get something to eat. that no young women had met my eyes he knew: a surly guy with no meter, who Most of the restaurants in Urfa had a or smiled at me in Urfa till then. As I charged an exorbitant fifty-five dollars sign that said “family restaurant,” mean- walked on, I felt a rising sense of free- round trip, and sighed and muttered ing there was one room that was for dom, as if for the first time I could look under his breath the whole way. He didn’t men only and one “family room,” where wherever I wanted and not risk receiv- answer his phone when I called him to women were allowed. The one I chose ing a hostile glance. So I kept the scarf pick me up, and I ended up having to had its family room on the roof. There on. And then I went back into the city.

46 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 This isn’t a scientific study; I didn’t impeding my ability to stand or walk? appeal to someone just like Houelle- try it multiple times, or measure any- And yet, when I thought about leav- becq, with lavishly funded universities, thing. All I have is my subjective impres- ing the scarf on for the rest of my stay, fantastic meze, freely flowing French sion, which is this: walking through the something about it felt dishonest, al- and Lebanese wines, and multiple teen city with a head scarf was a completely most shameful, as if I were duping peo- wives for every intellectual who con- diferent experience. People were so much ple into being kind to me. Those girls verts to Islam. But the political rheto- nicer. Nobody looked away when I ap- who smiled into my eyes—they thought ric of the movement’s leader, Moham- proached. I felt less jostled; men seemed I was like them. The guy who helped me med Ben Abbes, is well reasoned and to step aside, to give me more room. on the bus—he thought I was his sister. coherent, bearing a certain resemblance When I went into a store, a man held At that point, another thought came to Erdoğan’s actual platform, and pre- the door for me, and I realized that it to me, a kind of fantasy, so foreign that I sented with a frankness and lucidity was the first time anyone had reached could barely articulate it even to myself: that made me understand the logic of a door before me without going in first What if I really did it? What if I wore a the A.K.P. in a way I never had before. and letting it shut in my face. Most in- scarf not as a disguise but somehow for Internationally, Ben Abbes seeks to credibly, when I got to a bus stop shortly real? I was thirty-four, and I’d been hav- transform Europe into a Mediterranean after the bus had pulled away, the de- ing a lot of doubts about the direction my and North African union of Muslim parting vehicle stopped in the middle life was taking. I had had an abortion the states: a program similar to the “neo-Is- of the street, the door opened, and a previous year, with some reluctance, and lamism” of Ahmet Davutoğlu, the A.K.P. man reached out his hand to help me everything—every minor defeat, every prime minister. Domestically, Ben Abbes in, calling me “sister.” It felt amazing. sign of unfriendliness—still hurt a little supports entrepreneurialism, family busi- To feel so welcomed and accepted and extra. I had never felt so alone, and in a nesses, and the free market; socially, safe, to be able to look into someone’s way that seemed suddenly to have been he seeks to bolster Muslim education face and smile, and have the smile re- of my design, as if I had chosen this life and to encourage women to be stay- turned—it was a wonderful gift. without realizing it, years earlier, when at-home mothers, while continuing to How long can I keep wearing it? I I set out to become a writer. And now tout the supreme value of democratic found myself thinking, as the bus lurched a glimmer appeared before me of a to- rule. I had never understood how all into motion and cars honked around us. tally diferent way of being than any I these goals were related, or even com- The rest of the day? Forever? had imagined, a life with clear rules and patible. How could someone who op- I wondered why it hadn’t occurred to duties that you followed, in exchange posed feminism—who was O.K. with me sooner to try wearing a head scarf— for which you were respected and hon- half the population being less educated why nobody ever told me it was some- ored and safe. You had children—not than the other half—be in favor of de- thing I could do. It wasn’t diicult, or maybe but definitely. You didn’t have mocracy? How could a democratic con- expensive. Why should I not cover my to worry that your social value was ir- stitution not be secular? How could it be head here, if it made the people who lived revocably tied to your sexual value. You compatible with any of the Abrahamic here feel so much better? Why should I had less freedom, true. But what was so faiths, with anything that came out of cause needless discomfort to them and great about freedom? What was so great that cave in Urfa? I had always assumed to myself? Out of principle? What prin- about being a journalist and going around that Erdoğan was being insincere about ciple? The principle that women were being a pain in everyone’s ass, something: either he was just equal to men? To whom was I com- having people either be sus- pretending to care about de- municating that principle? With what picious and mean to you or mocracy or he was just pre- degree of success? What if I thought I try to use you for their P.R. tending to care about Mus- was communicating one thing but what strategy? Travelling alone, lim family values—or, as my people understood was something else— especially as a woman, es- relatives said, he was pre- what if what they understood was that I pecially in a patriarchal cul- tending both about democ- disapproved of them and thought their ture, can be really stressful. racy and Islam, and the only way of life was backward? Did that still It can make you question the thing he really cared about count as “communicating”? most basic priorities around was building more shopping I found myself thinking about high which your life is arranged. malls with Gulf money. heels. High heels were painful, and, for Like: Why do I have a job Reading “Submission,” I me at least, expensive, because they made that makes me travel alone? For litera- saw that there is, in fact, a logical consis- walking more diicult and I ended up ture? What’s literature? tency in the Islamist moderate free-trade taking more taxis. Yet there were many platform. Democracy, like capitalism, is times when I wore heels to work-related HESE THOUGHTS recently came back a numbers game, and “family values” is events in New York, specifically be- T to me when I read “Submission,” a machine that boosts the population. cause I felt it made people treat me with the latest novel by Michel Houelle becq, As one Houellebecq character puts it: more consideration. Why, then, would a satire set in a 2022 France ruled by Couples who follow one of the three reli- I refuse to wear a head scarf, which democratically elected Islamic moder- gions of the Book and maintain patriarchal brought a similar benefit of social ac- ates. The Islam in “Submission” is largely values have more children than atheists or ceptance, without the disadvantage of a fantasy designed, by Houellebecq, to agnostics. You see less education among women,

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 47 less hedonism and individualism. And to a introduction, he does some reread- François realizes, women—or “at least large degree, this belief in transcendence can ing and realizes, for the first time, that the ones pretty enough to attract a rich be passed on genetically. Conversions, or cases “Huysmans’s true subject had been bour- husband”—live in an eternal child- where people grow up to reject family values, are statistically insigniicant. In the vast major- geois happiness, a happiness painfully hood, first as children, then as moth- ity of cases, people stick with whatever meta- out of reach for a bachelor.” That was ers, with just a few years of “sexy un- physical system they grow up in. That’s why all Huysmans ever wanted: not the all- derwear” in between: “Obviously they atheist humanism—the basis of any “pluralist black meals, not the jewel-encrusted tur- had no autonomy, but as they say in society”—is doomed. tle, but simply “to have his artist friends English, fuck autonomy.” The atheist humanists in Houelle- over for a pot-au-feu with horseradish Houellebecq’s vision of an Islamic becq’s 2022 are doomed, not just to sauce, accompanied by an ‘honest’ wine state, for all its cartoonishness, has a cer- extinction but also to uncoolness. The and followed by plum brandy and to- tain imaginative generosity. He portrays 1968 movement in Europe, much bacco, with everyone sitting by the stove Islam not as a depersonalized creeping like the Kemalist revolution in Tur- while the winter winds battered the tow- menace, or as an ideological last resort key, was once youthful and countercul- ers of Saint-Sulpice.” Such happiness to which those disenfranchised by the tural, and then it won, and itself became is “painfully out of reach for a bach- West may be “vulnerable,” but as a sys- an old and crumbling establishment. elor,” even a rich one with servants; it tem of beliefs that is enormously ap- Ben Abbes, Houellebecq writes, gets really depends on a wife who can cook pealing to many people, many of whom no trouble from “the last of the soix- and entertain, who can turn a house have other options. It’s the same real- ante-huitards, those progressive mum- into a home. ization I reached in Urfa. Nobody has mified corpses—extinct in the wider This is the cost of bourgeois happi- everything; everyone is trading certain world—who managed to hang on in ness, in Houellebecq’s Islamic utopia: things for others. the citadels of the media.” The outnum- the independence of women. It’s fas- bered, irrelevant zombies, still naïvely cinating to see how Houellebecq rises DIDN’T WEAR the scarf again, after that believing themselves to be the defend- to the challenge of making female do- I afternoon. I couldn’t explain it ra- ers of the downtrodden, are so “para- mestic enslavement seem palatable in tionally, but it didn’t feel right. I stuck lyzed” by the Muslims’ “multicultural the novel, not just to the Islamo-curi- to my original strategy of smiling and background” that they don’t even put ous François but also, to some extent, ignoring social cues—the American up a fight. to the women of France. For exam- way. “In the vast majority of cases,” as Houellebecq’s narrator, François, ple, early in the novel, François looks a French intellectual once said, “people is a middle-aged professor of French up two of his exes, successful single stick with whatever metaphysical sys- literature—a specialist in the novels women in their forties; these scenes tem they grow up in.” of Joris-Karl Huysmans. Huysmans’s suggest, not implausibly, that the pen- In the course of multiple trips to “Against Nature” (1884), widely con- alties of aging, and the psychic toll of the site, the surly taxi-driver gradually sidered a masterpiece of the decadent dating and singleness, are even harder opened up, especially after I compli- movement, tells the story of a disso- for women than for men, and that they mented him on the skill with which he lute aristocrat who devotes his life to aren’t really balanced out by the joys avoided hitting pedestrians at the last aesthetic pursuits, such as eating all- of a career in, say, wine distribution or possible second. “That was nothing,” black meals and hanging around with pharmaceuticals. François subsequently the driver said, and told me about the a giant jewel-encrusted tortoise. These visits a female ex-colleague who has time he had managed not to run over activities fail to bring him happiness, retired to domestic life pending the an old man who was walking right even as they seem to exhaust the pos- Islamization of the university. “To see down the middle of the road as if it sibilities of the decadent novel. Huys- her bustling around the kitchen in an were the sidewalk, and who, in response mans converted to Catholicism after apron bearing the humorous phrase to the driver’s honking, simply stood writing “Against Nature.” The paral- ‘Don’t Holler at the Cook—That’s the where he was and shouted, “Pretend lels between François and Huysmans’s Boss’s Job!,’. . . it was hard to believe I’m a tree.” hero are clear. François, too, has devoted that just days ago she’d been leading “How can you reason with someone his life to aesthetic pursuits: reading, a doctoral seminar on the altogether like that?” the driver demanded, add- watching television, chain-smoking, unusual circumstances surrounding ing that when he drove in Urfa he con- drinking supermarket wine, and dat- Balzac’s corrections to the proofs of ducted himself according to logic and ing undergraduates. He, too, finds these Béatrix,” he observes. “She’d made us not according to the traic laws, be- indulgences empty and exhaustible: lit- tartlets stufed with ducks’ necks and cause the rate of survival for someone erature stops seeming interesting, and shallots, and they were delicious.” In who followed traic laws had dropped sex gets more diicult every year. In a later passage, set on a train, François to zero per cent. much the same way that Huysmans contrasts the visible stress of a Muslim We pulled up at the hotel. “So you’re converted to Catholicism, François businessman, who is having a clearly still with us,” the receptionist said, not converts to Islam. harrowing phone conversation, with unhumorously, when I walked in. When the Muslim government sub- the high spirits of his two teen wives, “Of course,” I replied. “What per- sidizes a Pléiade edition of Huysmans who are solving puzzles from the news- son who has come to Urfa would ever and commissions François to write an paper. Under the “Islamic regime,” want to leave?” 

48 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 ness. You no longer miss them. Jerks. SHOUTS & MURMURS 12:30 P.M. Teleconference in your mom for sympathy. When she demands that you list your symptoms, tell her OFFICIAL AGENDA FOR it doesn’t matter; it’s probably a virus. After she hangs up, wait ten minutes YOUR SICK DAY while she calls your nearest relative who’s a doctor, repeats your symptoms, BY HALLIE CANTOR then calls you back to tell you that it’s probably a virus. 1:00 P.M. Devote the next four hours 8:00 A.M. Orient yourself to the idea of utes longer than it usually does, because to fitfully drifting in and out of sleep. waking up with the preliminary goal you are so sick that every tiny action 5:00 P.M. Conclude napping portion of sussing out whether what you’re feels like a herculean task. of the day by waking suddenly from feeling is normal alarm-clock-induced 9:15 A.M. Perform the same e-mail and a fever dream, newly certain that the grogginess or actual illness. social-media checks you do every morn- discomfort of being sick is your pun- 8:15 A.M. Table the issue by hitting ing at work. But today you’re doing ishment for some crime you don’t re- Snooze. them in pajamas! member committing, possibly in a past 8:30 A.M. Synthesize the available data 10:00 A.M. Take this opportunity to touch life. Also, it’s dark out now. points: you’re achy all over, you can’t base with all the TV shows you don’t 5:10 P.M. Reassess your state of health. breathe out of your right nostril, it hurts have time to watch when you’re healthy. Resolved: you still feel like shit. to swallow, and your head weighs about Each show will require no more than 5:20 P.M. Spend twenty minutes look- ing for a thermometer. How do you not have a thermometer? You have several specific memories of buying thermometers. 5:40 P.M. Settle for feeling your fore- head with your hand. It seems warm, but maybe that’s just because your hand is cold. Conduct due diligence by ran- domly feeling a bunch of diferent sur- faces in your apartment to try to com- pare them with your forehead. 6:00 P.M. Break for cold leftover soup. 6:40 P.M. Reflect on how annoying it ten thousand pounds. Reach consen- ten minutes, because that’s how long is that you never think to buy tissues sus that you are, in fact, sick enough you’re currently capable of paying at- until you’re so sick that you can’t go to stay home. Snooze again in celebra- tention to anything. out to buy tissues. tion of your decision. 11:30 A.M. Consult minutes from pre- 6:45 P.M. After achieving unsatisfactory 8:45 A.M. Draft an e-mail to your su- vious days of and weekends to deter- results from wiping your nose on your pervisors letting them know that you mine whether it’s always this hard for pajama sleeve, limp to the bathroom won’t be coming in. Debate merits of you to relax. If you’re using a whole and get the roll of toilet paper. phrasing it as “taking a sick day” ver- vacation day for this, shouldn’t you be 6:50 P. M . Now your nose is red and sus “working from home today.” If you having a better time? Aren’t you capa- chafed from wiping it with toilet paper. write “working from home,” you won’t ble of just existing in a state of physi- 7:00 P.M. Develop a three-pronged, for- have to use a vacation day. But will cal discomfort without obsessing over ward-looking action strategy of (a) everyone know that “working from how miserable you feel? swallowing whatever expired cold home” actually means sleeping? Maybe 12:00 P.M. Lunch break. Seamless some medicine you find in the bathroom you can do that thing where you just soup and try to look extra sick when it cabinets, (b) circling back to reëval- wake up every hour to send an e-mail arrives, so the delivery person doesn’t uate your health tomorrow morn- so they think you’ve been at your com- think you’re just lazy. ing, and (c) resolving to go to work puter the whole time. 12:15 P.M. Acknowledge that you’re no matter how terrible you feel, be- 9:00 A.M. Send e-mail. Next order of weirdly lonely right now and that you cause you honestly can’t face another business: enjoying some guilt-free, lux- miss everyone at the oice. whole day this boring and existen- urious, healing sleep. 12:20 P.M. Break out into several small tially miserable. 9:01 A.M. Agenda updated to reflect new discussion groups on Gchat to rem- 7:30 P.M. Hold internal vote: Is it late data: you can’t sleep. edy this issue. Overwhelming trend: enough to go to sleep yet? 9:02 A.M. Relocate from your bed to the everyone is insuiciently compas- 7:31 P.M. Reach unanimous decision:

GARY TAXALI GARY couch. This will take about twenty min- sionate about your possibly fatal ill- Yes. 

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 49 would pile everything onto the side- LETTER FROM MILWAUKEE walk: mattresses; a floor-model televi- sion; her copy of “Don’t Be Afraid to Discipline”; a nice glass dining table FORCED OUT and a lace tablecloth; the meat in the freezer. For many poor Americans, eviction never ends. Arleen was thirty-eight, with pecan- brown skin and world-weary eyes. She BY MATTHEW DESMOND had supported her children over the years by working, as well as by rely- RLEEN BEALE’S latest eviction began happen if she waited any longer to leave. ing on welfare. When Jori’s father left A with a snowball fight. It was Jan- Her first eviction had taken place six- her, she had a cleaning job at Main- uary of 2008, and Milwaukee was ex- teen years earlier, when she was twenty- stay Suites, by the airport. In despair, periencing its snowiest winter on rec- two; she figured that she had rented she quit and began receiving welfare. ord. Arleen’s son Jori and his cousin twenty houses since turning eighteen. Later, she found work wiping tables and were cutting up, packing powder tight First, the landlord would summon the mopping up spills at the Third Street and taking aim at the passing cars on sherif, who would arrive with a gun, a Pier restaurant, but, after her mother Arthur Avenue. One jerked to a stop, team of movers, and a judge’s order say- died, she left that job, too. and a man jumped out, chasing the ing that her house was no longer hers. When Arleen was evicted from her

An eviction in Milwaukee in December. Often, landlords turn to informal methods to get families to leave. boys to Arleen’s apartment, where he Then Arleen would be given two op- apartment on Arthur Avenue, she was broke down the door with a few kicks. tions: “truck” or “curb.” “Truck” meant receiving a stipend from Wisconsin When the landlord found out about that her things would be loaded into Works, a family-aid program—a re- the property damage, she decided to an eighteen-footer and checked into duced amount, because she wasn’t work- evict. Arleen had been there with her bonded storage. She could get every- ing. The sum, in 2008, was the same as sons—Jori was thirteen, Jafaris five— thing back after paying three hundred when welfare was reformed more than for eight months. and fifty dollars. Arleen didn’t have the a decade earlier: $20.65 a day, $7,536 The day they had to be out was bit- money, so she would have opted for a year. terly cold, but Arleen knew what would “curb,” which meant that the movers Arleen took her sons to a homeless

50 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 PHOTOGRAPH BY PHILIP MONTGOMERY shelter, where they stayed until April, groceries. (Names have been changed.) the same proportion of poor renting when she found a house on Nineteenth She had spent forty dollars of her own families nationwide was unable to pay and Hampton, in the predominantly money on the food and picked up the all of their rent, and a similar number black inner city, on Milwaukee’s North rest at a pantry. She knew Arleen needed thought it was likely that they would Side, where she’d grown up. There was it. Arleen thanked Sherrena and closed be evicted soon. often no running water, and Jori had the door. Things were of to a good start. For decades, social scientists, jour- to bucket out what was in the toilet. nalists, and policymakers have focussed But Arleen loved that the rent was VEN IN the most desolate areas of on jobs, public assistance, parenting, and only five hundred and twenty-five dol- E American cities, evictions used to mass incarceration as the central prob- lars a month, and that the house was be rare enough to draw crowds. Evic- lems faced by the American poor, over- set apart from others on the block. “It tion riots erupted during the Depres- looking just how deeply housing is im- was quiet,” she remembered. “It was sion, though the number of poor fami- plicated in the creation of poverty. Not my favorite place.” lies who faced eviction each year was a everyone living in a distressed neigh- After a few weeks, the city found fraction of what it is today. In Febru- borhood is associated with gang mem- the house “unfit for human habita- ary, 1932, the Times published an ac- bers, parole oicers, employers, social tion.” Arleen moved into a drab apart- count of community resistance to the workers, or pastors. But nearly every- ment complex deeper in the inner city, eviction of three families in the Bronx, one has a landlord. on Atkinson Avenue, which she soon observing, “Probably because of the learned was a haven for drug dealers. cold, the crowd numbered only 1,000.” FEW MONTHS before Arleen moved She feared for her boys, especially Jori, These days, evictions are too com- A into the Thirteenth Street du- who was goofy and slack-shouldered monplace to attract attention. There are plex, Sherrena Tarver wound her way and would talk to anyone. They en- sherif squads whose full-time job is to through the North Side, listening to dured four summer months there be- carry out eviction and foreclosure or- R. & B. with her window down. Most fore their caseworker at Wraparound, ders. Some moving companies special- middle-class Milwaukeeans zoomed a social-services agency, found them ize in evictions, their crews working all past the inner city on the freeway. Land- a bottom duplex unit on Thirteenth day long, five days a week. Hundreds of lords took the side streets, typically not Street and Keefe. data-mining companies sell landlords in their Saab or Audi but in their “rent To avoid embarrassment, Arleen and tenant-screening reports that list past collector,” some oil-leaking, rusted-out the boys walked their things over to the evictions and court filings. Meanwhile, van or truck that hauled around exten- new place at night, pushing the larger families have watched their incomes sion cords, ladders, maybe a loaded pis- items, like the sun-faded floral-print stagnate or fall as their housing costs tol, plumbing snakes, toolboxes, a can love seat, on top of a wheeled garbage have soared. Today, the majority of poor of Mace, and other necessities. Sher- can. At the house, she held her breath renting families spend more than half rena usually left her lipstick- red Ca- and tried the lights, smiling with re- their income on housing, and millions maro at home and visited tenants in a lief when they came on. She could live of Americans are evicted every year. In beige-and-brown 1993 Chevy Subur- of someone else’s electricity bill for a Milwaukee, a city of fewer than a hun- ban with twenty-two-inch rims, which while. There was a fist-size hole in a dred and five thousand renter house- belonged to Quentin, her husband, living-room window, the front door holds, landlords legally evict roughly business partner, and property man- had to be locked with an ugly wooden sixteen thousand adults and children ager. He used a screwdriver to start it. plank dropped into metal brackets, and each year. As the real-estate market has Some white Milwaukeeans still re- the carpet was filthy, the dirt ground recovered in the wake of the foreclo- ferred to the North Side as “the core,” as in. But the kitchen was spacious and sure crisis and the ensuing recession, they did in the sixties, and if they ven- the living room well lit. Arleen stufed evictions have only increased. tured into it they saw street after street a piece of clothing into the window But there are other ways, cheaper of twenty-four-hour day-care centers, hole and hung ivory curtains. and quicker than a court order, to re- fading murals, and corner stores with The rent was five hundred and fifty move a family. Some landlords pay “WIC Accepted Here” signs. Deindustri- dollars a month, utilities not included— tenants a couple of hundred dollars alization had crippled cities across the the going rate for a two-bedroom apart- to leave by the end of the week. Some Rust Belt, and Milwaukee was among ment in one of the worst neighborhoods take of the front door. Nearly half the hardest hit; by 2000, its popula- in America’s fourth-poorest city—and of the forced moves of renting fami- tion had fallen below six hundred thou- would take eighty-eight per cent of Ar- lies in Milwaukee are “informal evic- sand, down from more than seven hun- leen’s six-hundred-and-twenty- eight- tions,” which, like many rentals, in- dred and forty thousand at its peak, in dollar-a-month welfare check. Maybe volve no paperwork, and take place in 1960. It showed. On a typical residen- she could make it work, at least through the shadow of the law. Between 2009 tial street on the North Side, a few sin- the winter. and 2011, more than one in eight Mil- gle-family homes remained, owned by There was a knock at the door. It waukee renters were displaced invol- older folks who tended gardens and was the landlord, Sherrena Tarver, a untarily, whether by formal or infor- hung American flags. But most of the short black woman with bobbed hair mal eviction, landlord foreclosure, or other dwellings were sagging duplexes and freshly done nails, loaded down with building condemnation. In 2013, nearly or four-family apartment buildings with

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 51 chipping paint and bedsheet curtains, population comprised some upper- and it all to use, rearranging the furniture next to vacant lots and empty houses middle-class households who rented and stacking the dishes next to her nice with boarded-up doors and windows. out of preference or circumstance; some porcelain plates, which she’d been given Sherrena saw all this, but she saw young and transient people; and most long ago by a domestic-violence shelter. something else, too. Like other sea- of the city’s poor, who could not buy She unpacked a stereo and listened to soned landlords, she knew who owned a home or gain access to public hous- old-school hip-hop tracks—her favor- which multifamily house, which church, ing, because there wasn’t enough of it. ite being 2Pac’s “Keep Ya Head Up”— which bar; knew the neighborhood’s vi- Landlords operated in diferent areas while she worked on the apartment. In cissitudes of life, its shades and moods; of the city, focussing on certain kinds the kitchen, she hung a drawing of black knew which blocks were drug-soaked of tenants: whites or immigrants, poor farmers hoeing a row. In the basement, and which were quiet. She had a keen families or college students. Sherrena she’d come across rollers, brushes, and sense of the ghetto’s value and how decided to specialize in renting to the a five-gallon container of white paint. money could be made from a prop- black poor. She lugged everything upstairs, tied a erty that looked worthless to people Four years after buying her first wrap around her head, and gave the who didn’t know any better. rental property, she owned thirty-six walls a fresh coat. It wasn’t easy. Once, an evicted couple units, all in the inner city. She began car- Jafaris scavenged the basement, too, shoved socks down the sinks and turned rying a pair of cell phones with backup transforming mop handles, discarded the water on full blast before moving batteries, reading Forbes, and accepting tools, and dog leashes into tanks and out. A disgruntled mortgage customer appointments from 9 A.M. to 9 P.M. She helicopters locked in battle. He and his tossed a homemade bomb through Sher- also started a credit-repair business and brother had grown used to churning rena’s oice window. The month before an investment business. She bought two through diferent apartments, neigh- she met Arleen, someone had been shot fifteen-passenger vans and launched a borhoods, and schools. In the seventh in one of Sherrena’s buildings. A few company that, for twenty-five to fifty and eighth grades, Jori had attended days after that, the city shut down one dollars a seat, transported girlfriends, five schools; when the family was home- of her properties because a tenant had mothers, and children to visit their in- less he often skipped class to help Ar- been caught stealing electricity. Sher- carcerated loved ones upstate. Sher- leen look for a new place. rena remembered meeting the woman, rena had found her calling: inner-city If Arleen had a housing voucher or a who had said she was fleeing an abu- entrepreneur. key to a public-housing unit, she would sive boyfriend. She had decided to rent be spending only thirty per cent of her to her and her children even though the RLEEN DIDN’T mind Thirteenth income on rent, which would mean woman had been evicted three times in A Street. There was a bodega owned the diference between stable poverty the past two years. There’s me having a by Arabs on one end of her block and and grinding poverty, between plant- heart again, she thought. a bar frequented by old men on the ing roots in a community and being When people asked why she went other. She could walk Jafaris to school. batted from one place to another. Two into real estate, Sherrena talked about She could have done without the crack decades ago, when she was nineteen, “long-term residuals” and “property addicts who’d recently moved into the she had rented a subsidized apartment being the best investment out there,” abandoned house next door, but a lit- for a hundred and thirty-seven dollars but there was more to it. She shared tle farther down the street a girl was a month. She was grateful to be out something with other landlords: an learning to play the violin. of her mother’s house, making deci- unbending con fidence that she could Arleen’s house was built in the Greek sions on her own. But, when a friend make it on her own without a com- Revival style: two stories of sandstone asked Arleen to give up her place and pany to fall back on, without a con- block with twin columns supporting an move in with her, she decided to say tract or a pension or a union. She had awning over the front door. A pair of yes, walking away from the subsidized an understanding with the universe that picture windows, adorned with peaked apartment and into the private rental she could start out with nothing and, pediments, faced the street from above market, where she had remained ever through her own gumption and intel- the porch. But the house had deterio- since. Once she left public housing, it ligence, come back with a good living. rated over the years. One column base was next to impossible to get back in. Sherrena had bought a home in was settling, causing the awning to slope “I thought it was O.K. to move some- 1999, when prices were low. Riding sideways. The columns, the porch, and where else,” she recalled. “And I regret the housing boom a few years later, the window pediments had been painted it, right now to this day. Young!” She she refinanced and pulled out twenty- ash gray, and an imposing iron-barred shook her head at her nineteen-year- one thousand dollars in equity, then outer door had been installed. old self. “If I would’ve been in my right refinanced again. She used the cash to But, inside, Arleen’s new apartment mind, I could have still been there.” buy her first rental property: a two-unit was coming along. The previous tenants The list of applicants for Milwaukee’s duplex in the inner city, where housing had been evicted and had vacated in a rent-assistance program was notoriously was cheapest. Rental profits, refinanc- hurry, leaving behind a large armoire, a stagnant. One day, Arleen stopped by ing, and high-interest loans from pri- dresser, a bed, and a refrigerator. There the Housing Authority and asked about vate real-estate investors helped her was even more in the basement: dishes, it. “The list is frozen,” she was told. On buy more. She learned that the rental clothes, an upholstered chair. Arleen put it were more than thirty-five hundred

52 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 families who had applied for assistance could put in a few calls to family mem- work and received a court date of De- four years earlier and were still wait- bers or nonprofit agencies and ask for cember 23rd. It was the last eviction ing for placement. It could have been help. court before Christmas, and Sherrena worse. In larger cities, like Washing- Sherrena and Quentin were in the knew the Milwaukee County Court- ton, D.C., the wait for public housing Suburban when Arleen called at the house would be packed. The court used was counted in decades. Three in four beginning of the next month. After a to take a break from evictions at Christ- American families who qualified for quick conversation, Sherrena hung up mastime, but that was discontinued housing assistance received nothing: and looked at her husband. “Arleen in 1991, after a landlord persuaded the amount of government aid didn’t said her check didn’t come.” the American Civil Liberties Union come close to meeting the need. Quentin kept his eyes on the road. to argue that the practice was an un- If Arleen wanted public housing, she “Story of they life,” he said. fair religious celebration. Many par- would have to save roughly six hun- Arleen had told a half-truth. She had ents chose to take their chances with dred dollars to repay the Housing Au- their landlords rather than face their thority for having left the subsidized children empty-handed on Christ- apartment years before without giving mas morning. A new tenant had al- notice; then wait two to three years ready asked Sherrena if a portion of her until the list unfroze; then wait another rent money could be returned so that two to five years until her application she could buy gifts. “You gotta have a made it to the top of the pile; then pray house to put the Christmas tree and that the person with the stale cofee presents in,” Sherrena told her. “You’ve and the heavy stamp reviewing her file been knowing Christmas was coming would somehow overlook the eviction received a check, but not for six hun- eleven months ago.” record that she’d accumulated while try- dred and twenty-eight dollars. She had ing to make ends meet in the private missed an appointment with her wel- VICTION PROCEEDINGS took place housing market on a welfare check. fare caseworker, having forgotten about E in Room 400 of the Milwaukee it. A reminder notice was mailed to At- County Small Claims Court, the bus- RESS 1 to leave a voice message.” kinson—or was it Nineteenth Street? iest courtroom in the state. Sherrena “P Sherrena pressed 1. “Arleen, this When Arleen didn’t show up, the case- scanned its long wooden pews for a is Sherrena calling. I’m calling to find worker “sanctioned” her by decreasing seat, waving at landlords she recog- out if you had your rent. Remember we her benefit. Arleen could have given nized. At the back of the room, land- agreed that you were going to pay a lit- Sherrena her reduced check, but she lords were ofering tenants stipulation tle bit over to get caught up with the thought it was better to be behind and agreements: they wouldn’t be evicted if three-twenty you owed for—” Sherrena have a few hundred dollars in her pocket they caught up on the rent. Toward the stopped herself from finishing the sen- than be behind and completely broke. front, where the bailif sat, lawyers in tence with “your sister’s funeral costs.” Sherrena saw herself as a charita- pin-striped suits and power ties waited She went on, “Um, I will be expecting ble businesswoman, providing hous- in a reserved space. They had been hired the six hundred and fifty. Go ’head and ing to the destitute. “I don’t discrimi- by landlords. Everyone in the reserved give me a call.” nate against crackheads, because those space was white. Arleen didn’t regret what she had crackheads need a place to stay,” she’d Two clerks at a large wooden desk an- done. Usually, when there was a fu- say. Still, evictions were a regular part nounced the day’s cases and took atten- neral, she couldn’t even aford to buy of her job. She didn’t hesitate, but she dance. Most of the names called went Jafaris new shoes and would just polish also didn’t reach mechanically for the unanswered. Roughly seventy per cent his best ones. But this was her sister— pink papers. “It’s kind of hard to put of the tenants summoned to Milwau- in the spiritual sense, if not the biolog- somebody out,” she admitted. In Sep- kee’s eviction court didn’t come. The same ical one. She would have been ashamed tember, Sherrena had learned that one was true in other major cities. Some ten- of herself if she hadn’t pitched in. She of her favorite tenants—Lamar, a dou- ants couldn’t miss work or couldn’t find split her welfare check between Sher- ble amputee and a single father—had childcare or were confused by the whole rena and New Pitts Mortuary. fallen behind. “I’m gonna have a hard process or couldn’t care less or would Sherrena felt bad when she heard time doing this,” she told Quentin, rather avoid the humiliation. When a about Arleen’s sister. It was Novem- when eviction began to seem neces- tenant didn’t show up and her landlord ber, and Arleen had been living on sary. “I love Lamar. But love don’t pay or a representative did, the clerk applied Thirteenth Street for less than two the bills.” three quick stamps to the file—indicat- months. She made her tenant a deal. After thinking things over, Sher- ing that the tenant had received a de- Arleen could stay if she paid six hun- rena decided that the funeral and the fault eviction judgment—and placed it dred and fifty dollars for three months subsequent welfare sanction had put on top of a growing pile. The sound of to make up the lost rent. Even if Ar- Arleen too far behind: eight hundred eviction court was a soft hum of dozens leen signed over her entire welfare check and seventy dollars. It was time, she of people sighing, coughing, murmuring, each month, she would still be short. said, to “let go and move on to the next and whispering to children, interspersed But Sherrena was betting that Arleen tenant.” She filed the eviction paper- with the cadence of a name, a pause,

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 53 and three loud thumps of the stamp. ’cause I got bills. I got a bill to show tary posture and a broad, open face. Ar- Sherrena wondered if Arleen would you right now that’s gonna take your leen waited while she and Sherrena set- come. Most of her tenants didn’t, and she eyes outta your head.” She reached into tled another matter in her oice. preferred it that way. She had learned her files and handed Arleen a tax bill “Any luck with that invoice?” Gram- that it didn’t matter how much kind- for a property of hers that the city had ling Perez asked. ness she had shown a tenant: “all that condemned. It listed delinquent storm- The day before, Sherrena had asked stuf goes out the window” during a water and sewer charges, fees for the Gramling Perez to approve a claim of five hearing. Still, Sherrena had called Ar- board-up, and additional charges, total- thousand dollars which she had brought leen that morning to remind her about ling $11,465.67. Arleen stared blankly against an evicted tenant. Each eviction court. She didn’t have to, but she had a at the bill. The amount was more than case had two parts. The first “cause of ac- soft spot for Arleen. her annual income. tion” dealt strictly with whether a tenant The courtroom was full of black As Sherrena reclaimed her seat, she would be evicted. Next came the second women, surrounded by children of all remembered her first eviction. Nervous and third causes of action, which dealt ages. In a typical month, three in four and confused, she had gone over the pa- with what was owed to a landlord: un- people in Milwaukee’s eviction court were perwork a dozen times. Everything went paid rent, court fees, and other damages. black, and three in four of those were her way, giving her the power to have Most tenants who were sued for eviction women. One female renter in seventeen sherif deputies remove the family in ques- were taken to court twice, once for the from the city’s poorest black neighbor- tion within ten days. Soon afterward, she eviction and then for the debt. But even hoods was evicted through the court sys- filed another eviction suit, then another. fewer tenants showed up for their sec- tem each year, twice the number for men When filling out the court papers, Sher- ond hearing, which meant that landlords’ from the same neighborhoods, and nine rena learned to put “et al.” after a tenant’s claims for what was owed them usually times that for women from the poorest name, so that the eviction judgment cov- went unchallenged. white areas. Women from black neigh- ered everyone in the house, even people Suing a tenant for back rent and court borhoods made up less than ten per cent she didn’t know about. She learned that fees was straightforward. Landlords were of Milwaukee’s population but nearly a commissioners frowned on late fees in ex- allowed to charge for unpaid rent, late third of its evicted tenants. If incarcera- cess of fifty-five dollars, and that dragging fees that the court found reasonable, tion had come to define the lives of men slow-paying tenants to court was usually and double rent for each day that ten- from impoverished black neighborhoods, worth the $89.50 processing fee, because ants remained in the home after their eviction was shaping the lives of women. it spurred many of them to find a way to tenancy had been terminated. Things Poor black men were locked up. Poor catch up. Plus, she could add the process- got murkier when tallying up property black women were locked out. ing fee to their rent bill. damages. Sometimes Sherrena guessed “Sherrena,” someone whispered. Ar- Time passed. The lawyers had gone an amount on the ride over to eviction leen had poked her head into Room 400. home; their cases were called first. Fi- court: “How much should I put for the Sherrena stepped into the hallway nally, two hours after arriving at the back door? One-fifty? Two hundred?” and walked up to Arleen, who was wear- courthouse, Sherrena was summoned. Sometimes she added on an extermi- ing a red hoodie. “Girl,” Sherrena said, She had drawn Commissioner Laura nation fee, even though Quentin would “I got to get you up outta this house Gramling Perez, a white woman in a take care of it himself. Gramling Perez or get my money. Genuine. . . . I mean, dark pants suit and pearls, with a mili- was now asking Sherrena to provide ev- idence that would justify suing an ex- tenant for the maximum amount al- lowed in small-claims court. “What I’m trying to get from her doesn’t even scratch the surface of what she did to the property,” Sherrena replied, presenting photos of a trashed unit and the same bill she had shown to Arleen. “I need something else,” Gramling Perez said. Sherrena pushed back but got no- where. “I’ll never get that anyway,” she said, finally. Gramling Perez reduced Sherrena’s charges to $1,285. That money judg- ment joined those of eight other eviction cases that Sherrena had initiated earlier that month, which totalled more than ten thousand dollars in estimated lost rent and damages. Sherrena, who netted “I won’t have kids until gay men are able to give birth in every state.” an equivalent amount each month after her bills were paid, knew that receiving just subtle alterations. Now “Arleen Beal” “Here’s the deal. Ma’am, you’re getting a money judgment and actually receiv- and “Erleen Belle” had eviction records. to move out voluntarily by January 1st,” ing the money were diferent matters. Be- The court clerks, like many landlords, she said. “If you don’t do that, if you don’t yond withholding tenants’ security depos- never stopped to ask for identification. move out, then your landlord is enti- its, landlords had limited recourse when Gramling Perez asked Sherrena if tled to come back here without further it came to collecting. Sherrena could try she would dismiss the eviction if Arleen notice, and she can get a writ of evic- to garnish wages, but only for former ten- moved out voluntarily by the thirty-first. tion. And then the sherif will come.” ants who were employed and living above “But what about the other money that the poverty line. She could garnish bank she owes me?” Sherrena asked. A dis- UTSIDE THE courthouse, a gentle accounts. But many of her former tenants missed eviction judgment could mean a O snow was falling. Sherrena had did not have bank accounts, and, even if dropped money judgment as well. agreed to give Arleen a ride home. In they did, state benefits and the first thou- “Well, my point is that you maybe the car, Sherrena paused to rub her sand dollars were of limits. give up a couple hundred dollars so you neck, and Arleen lowered her fore- don’t lose these tenants who are com- head into the palm of her hand. Both HEN HER turn came, Arleen de- ing in January.” Gramling Perez knew had splitting headaches. Sherrena at- W cided to sit next to Sherrena that Sherrena could pocket Arleen’s se- tributed hers to how court had gone. at the commissioner’s desk. The two curity deposit, leaving an unpaid rent She was still fuming that Gramling women looked for a moment like old balance of around three hundred and Perez had reduced her money judg- friends or even sisters, with one reflect- twenty dollars. Turning to Arleen, she ment. Arleen’s was from hunger. She ing life’s favor. Without lifting her eyes said, “In exchange for an agreement that hadn’t eaten all day. from Arleen’s file, Gramling Perez said, she won’t go after you—” “I don’t want to be putting you and “Your landlady is seeking to evict you Arleen interrupted: “I’m not trying your babies out in the cold,” Sherrena told for unpaid rent. Are you behind on to be in her money.” Arleen as the car moved slowly through rent, Ma’am?” Sherrena leaned forward in her chair. the slushy streets. “I wouldn’t want no- “Yes,” Arleen replied. “I don’t want to dismiss anything. I re- body to do me like that. . . . Some of them Gramling Perez looked at Sherrena ally don’t. . . . I mean, I’m tired of losing landlords, they get away with murder and asked, “Are you willing to work out on every single—” She began slap- down there. But there’s some like me, something out?” ping the table with each word. who get in front of the commissioner, “No,” Sherrena answered. “Because, Arleen looked at Gramling Perez. and she say whatever’s on her mind, and the thing is, she’s too far behind. See, I “I mean, I’m not trying to stay. I mean, that’s the way it’s gonna go. . . . She knows let her slide when the sister passed away I understand what she’s saying. That’s this system is screwed. It’s all one-sided.” or whatever. She didn’t pay all her rent her place.” Arleen stared out the window and that month. And now it’s another whole “I understand,” Gramling Perez said. watched the snow settle noiselessly on month has passed.” “I’m not trying to be there.” the iron lampposts, the ornate dome of “Do you have minor children at “I understand.” Gramling Perez the Public Library, the Church of the home?” Gramling Perez asked Arleen. shuled the papers in Arleen’s file and Gesu’s Gothic towers. She was one of the commissioners who said nothing more. “And some of these tenants,” Sher- sometimes subscribed to the court cus- Arleen thought of all the problems rena was saying, “they nasty as hell. They tom of giving tenants two extra days with the Thirteenth Street apartment: bring roaches with ’em. They bring mice in the home for each dependent child. the broken window, the sporadic hot with ’em. And who gotta pay for it? Then “I’ll be out before the first,” Arleen water, the grimy carpet. “I would say you pouring grease down the sink from said. “New Year’s at the latest.” something, but I’m not even gonna go your fried chicken, you pouring the grease “But, see, that goes into the begin- there. I’m all right,” she said. That was down the sink, and I gotta get a plumber ning of rental period again,” Sherrena her defense. A lawyer would have fought out again.” interjected. much harder, likely to a diferent end. The car turned down Center Street, “So you’re willing to do a stipulation When tenants have legal representation, passing a church where Arleen some- if she’s gone before the first?” Gramling their chances of keeping their homes in- times picked up gift baskets at Thanks- Perez asked. She knew that Arleen would crease dramatically. A program that ran giving and Christmas. She had always have to leave, but she was trying to spare in the South Bronx from 2005 to 2008, aspired to have her own ministry like her the blemish of another eviction. The for example, provided legal assistance that, to be the one handing out food Housing Authority counted evictions and to more than thirteen hundred fami- and clothing. unpaid debt as strikes when reviewing lies and prevented eviction in more than “So, Arleen,” Sherrena said as she applications, and landlords turned away eighty-five per cent of the cases, sav- pulled up in front of the house on Thir- applicants with recent evictions, which ing New York City hundreds of thou- teenth Street, “if you ever thinking about were displayed free of charge on a gov- sands of dollars in estimated shelter becoming a landlord, don’t. It’s a bad deal. ernment Web site. But Arleen’s record costs. But, unlike in criminal court, in Get the short end of the stick every time.” was not as extensive as it should have civil court the poor have no right to ap- Arleen stepped out of the car and been. Through the years, she had given pointed counsel. Arleen was on her own. turned back to Sherrena. “Merry Christ- landlords diferent names; nothing exotic, Gramling Perez looked at Arleen. mas,” she said. 

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 55 to find the hat on the floor. But I don’t ANNALS OF INSOMNIA really have insomnia. Every so often, I will resort to counting sheep—actually, I count divorced couples I know, and IN SEARCH OF FORTY WINKS sometimes, at 5 A.M., couples who should get divorced—but, in general, I do not Gizmos for a good night’s sleep. want to fall asleep ever. I have spent my life staying up later than I should. As a BY PATRICIA MARX child, I was convinced that turning in meant missing out on illicit fun. I tried to train myself to sleep with my forearm upright, my head propped on my palm, so that if my parents walked by my room they’d see that I never slept and there- fore didn’t need a bedtime. My favorite TV show, I used to say, was “The Late, Late, Late, Late Show.” When I got older, I liked being up at night because it seemed more productive to work when nobody was calling or e-mailing, and by work I mean Netflix. Besides, I’d always thought, What’s the big deal about being tired as long as your job doesn’t involve flying a plane—or, I suppose I should add, responsibilities like getting dressed? Unfortunately for me, regularly spend- ing a chunk of the nighttime in a state of suspended consciousness and drool turns out to be a gigantic deal. Accord- ing to scientists I spoke with, the qual- ity of your slumber has more repercus- sions on your happiness, intelligence, and health than what you eat, where you live, or how much money you make. Not to be a downer, but chronic sleep depriva- tion, which Amnesty International des- ignates a form of torture, has been linked to diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, learning diiculties, colds, gastrointestinal problems, depres- T’S 2:49 A.M., more or less my bedtime, my brain waves. Gradually, the rhythm sion, execution (the sleep-starved defense I and I’m about to put on my Sleep will slow down and, supposedly, so will minister of North Korea is rumored Shepherd hat, a device designed to help my brain, entrained as if by a hypnotist. to have been shot after dozing in the the wearer go gentle into unconscious- The noise sounds like the tone you’d presence of Kim Jong-un), world di- ness ($149.99). The hat is a stretchy black expect to hear before a nuclear disaster. sasters (the Challenger explosion, the beanie, but where you might normally It’s supposed to be soothing, and, truth Three Mile Island meltdown), and non- find a pompom there’s a plastic box the be told, I don’t mind it. The hat was in- disasters (the drop in the polls of Don- size of a Triscuit. If I were an alien, this vented by Michael Larson, a mechanical ald Trump, who is reported to get only would be the port through which I’d re- engineer at the University of Colorado. three or four hours of shut-eye a night). ceive my instructions from the mother Larson told me, over the phone, that Many scientists have come to believe ship. The box has an on-of switch, and he came up with it to treat his daugh- that while we sleep the space between I’m going to turn it on so that the mech- ter, who had an autoimmune disease our neurons expands, allowing a cra- anism can commune with my head. that prevented her from getting enough nial sewage network—the glymphatic The hat measures activity in my ce- deep sleep. The contraption apparently system—to flush the brain of waste rebral cortex through three sensors sewn did the trick. products that might otherwise not only into the fabric—one covering each ear In my case, it’s hard to say whether prevent memory formation but muck and a third handling the forehead. There it was the hat or causes non-millinery up our mental machinery and perhaps are also built-in speakers that emit puls- that ushered me into dreamland each of eventually lead to Alzheimer’s. Failing ing tones mimicking the frequencies of the nights I wore it: I always woke up to get enough sleep is like throwing a

56 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 ILLUSTRATION BY MIGUEL GALLARDO party and then firing the cleanup crew. the waiting room of the world’s slowest A National Institutes of Health study doctor, these insomniacs had regularly showed that twenty-five to thirty per passed their nights memorizing the ar- cent of American adults have periodic rangement of notes on a guitar fretboard, episodes of sleeplessness and twenty nurturing grudges, hating themselves, per cent sufer from chronic insom- thinking about world peace, pretend- nia. On the advice of sleep doctors, fa- ing to be in a submarine, and worrying, tigue-management specialists, and know- Is it Alzheimer’s, or worse? it-alls on wellness blogs, these tossers We will begin with the photonic de- and turners drink cherry juice, eat At- vices, but first some background. Unless lantic perch, set the bedroom thermo- you live in a drawer underneath a lot of stat between sixty-seven and seventy socks, your sleep patterns are cued by degrees, put magnets under the pillow, light and its absence. Photoreceptors curl their toes, uncurl their toes, and kick at the backs of your eyes pick up light their partners out of bed, usually to lit- and send corresponding electrical sig- tle avail. According to a study by the nals to the suprachiasmatic nucleus, in Centers for Disease Control and Pre- your brain. (If you are not a great speller, vention, four per cent of Americans re- you can call it the internal clock.) This ported having taken prescription sleep- master timekeeper regulates and syn- ing pills in the previous month, and an chronizes a host of other physiological additional who-knows-how-many use systems, such as temperature and blood anti-anxiety medications like Valium pressure, making sure that they all operate and Klonopin. Never mind that some on the same roughly twenty-four-hour studies suggest that a pill can extend cycle, known as the circadian rhythm. your sleep by as little as three minutes In an ideal world, by which I mean an a night and reduce the time it takes to un-ideal world without recessed light- nod of by only eight to twenty minutes. ing and iPads, the sun sets, it becomes Evidently, it was ever thus. The an- dark, and, presto, your pineal gland starts cient Romans smeared mouse fat onto to release the sleep-inducing hormone the soles of their feet, and the Lunesta melatonin (and a few other hormones). of the Dark Ages was a smoothie made During daylight hours, melatonin pro- from the gall of castrated boars. Charles duction is reduced. Exposure to light, es- Dickens apparently believed it was nec- pecially to the blue light of digital de- essary to position himself in the precise vices, discombobulates the clockwork. center of a bed that faced exactly north, As Mussolini mythically did for the while the Glasgow Herald advised the trains, so Re-Timer light-therapy glasses worried wakeful to lather up their hair can supposedly do for your sleep-wake with yellow soap before bedtime, wrap cycle ($299). These white plastic-framed their heads in napkins, rinse in the morn- visor goggles, which call to mind a pair ing, and repeat every night for two weeks. of welding glasses designed by Fellini, In 1879, a Canadian medical journal shine a faint blue-green light into your recommended hemlock. Presumably, no eyes in the service of winding your inner repeating was required. timepiece, treating jet lag as well as win- Lately, a dreamy abundance of gad- ter doldrums. Do they work? Meg, who gets, fancy pillows, expensive masks, and is routinely awakened in the middle of other non-sex-purposed bedroom para- the night by worries big and small, wore phernalia have entered the marketplace. the glasses at home for the recommended They promise a refreshing sleep, or, if that thirty minutes a day for a week and then fails, at least an accounting of how much during a flight to the Philippines. The you snore. There would not be enough sight of her, she said, unsettled both the nights in the wild dark yonder for me family dog and flight attendants. Find- to try all these products personally, but ing herself getting tired earlier and sleep- fortunately the anguish of others can be ing through the night, she plans to keep a journalist’s good fortune. A bunch of using the glasses, although, she told me, friends, sick and tired of staring at the in a year “they will have been relegated ceiling, waiting for their mental power to that place in my apartment where the switches to flip of, signed on to sam- shiatsu back-massager cushion is stored, ple sleep aids and keep diaries during along with a lot of foreign coins.” their trials. As if stalled every night in Inside the Glo to Sleep therapy

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 57 mask—a pair of battery-operated black- supposed to avoid in the dusky hours? out glasses—are four luminous blue Yes. It’s been demonstrated that blue hatched lines. Don’t get up; they are not photons suppress melatonin more than emergency exits. They are “points of glo” any other color does. This short wave- ($39.99). According to the Glo Web site, length is copiously emitted by digital de- if you meditate on them as their radiance vices and TVs, which mess up your in- fades to black (within ten to thirty min- ternal clock. By phone from Australia, utes) you will be able to “switch of your Keith Wymbs, the co-owner, with his mind!” This is good because, as we also wife, of the NightWave Sleep Assistant, learn, from Amazon, “sleep is a safe, nat- defended blue: “The logical and scien- ural and efective way to help you get the tific colors are red and amber. Techni- sleep you need.” A bedtime-challenged cally, they afect body rhythms the least, friend named Sarah used the mask for but, based on feedback from early users, about a week, but confessed that she blue was found most soothing.” Simi- might not be the best judge, since she larly, Troy Anderson, of Glo to Sleep, also dipped into her usual cornucopia of told me, “We tried the mask with a red

soporifics—melatonin, magnesium, B6, light, but both genders liked blue, be- calcium, 5-hydroxytryptophan, ashwa- cause it was natural and clean.” gandha root, magnolia bark, Passiflora Yes, a display of flashing red lights incarnata, chamomile tea, Ziziphus ju- could make you think that the police are juba, and hot baths—making me won- arriving, but according to Fred Maxik, a der if her problem with sleep was that scientist who designed illumination to she had no time for it. help astronauts sleep in space, the real On most nights, Sarah found the mask reason that so many companies go blue calming: “I would think about how the is that it is energy eicient and there- floating lights looked like blue sleeping fore cheap. As the founder of Lighting pills, and that reminded me that I was Science, Maxik has developed a line of supposed to think about nothing.” Other white L.E.D.s that keep your circadian times, she found the thick foam of the rhythms in sync. Here is a snippet from mask stifling and hot. Her husband tried the sleep diary of Susan, who is prone a less fancy model ($29.99). “Bob said, to staying up until three in the morn- ‘There are no lights!’ ” Sarah reported. ing listening to podcasts. She tested the “This led to one of us doing something Good Night bulb, which has less blue we almost never do: reading instructions. light than traditional lighting ($39.95): I think that reading instructions of any “I turned on the light. I watched 15 min- kind might solve my sleep problem.” utes of the latest terror news before turn- The NightWave Sleep Assistant, a ing it of and then I fell asleep. I slept black cube the size of a bottle of sleep- until 2:00 (also nearly unprecedented), ing pills, shoots a pulsing circle of blue listened to a nice podcast about jihadi light onto your ceiling, in a sort of Dan terrorists, and went back to sleep until Flavin version of the Sistine Chapel 6:00. A really big sleep stretch for me.” ($49.95). As you watch this visual met- ronome, you are supposed to harmonize HOSE WHO snore the loudest al- your breathing to its beat until you conk “T ways fall asleep first,” Mr. Anon- out. According to my friend Peter, who ymous told me, which must mean that tested it, “Unless you are lying on the Mrs. A. makes a racket like a leaf blower upper mattress of a bunk bed at Camp with engine trouble. (A few years ago, it Wananawandakanda, there is no way in was reported that Tom Cruise slept in a hell that the blue light can ever show up soundproof room called the Snoratorium on the ceiling. It’s just too far away.” Per- so that his wife could get a good night’s haps Peter lives in a house with cathe- rest, a problem that later sorted itself out dral ceilings, because Megan, who oc- in a diferent way.) The SnoreMasker casionally sufers sleep paralysis (a scary Pro is a pair of little white-noise ma- disorder that causes you to feel conscious chines tucked inside earplugs ($399.95). even though your body is temporarily It promises to insulate you “from virtually immobilized as in REM sleep), found the all sound up to 70 decibels—about the blue light so tranquillizing that she says sound level of a loud alarm clock.” The she’d recommend it to restless friends. two pinkish plastic plugs could pass for But isn’t blue light the kind that we’re Barbie’s prosthetic dream hearts. Before

58 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 operating them, you must insert a len- logic of managing anxiety by causing it. til-size battery into each and then attach “Have you ever seen what happens with foam ear tips—an almost impossible task a puppy when you pick it up?” he asked, unless your fingers are as small as Ken’s. over the phone from Vancouver Island. When Mr. A. inserted the Snore- “It struggles and then gives up and melts Masker Pro, he said that it sounded into your arms.” In the same way, when as if he were standing under a water- you lie down on the mat, “your inner di- fall, and that, remarkably, he could not alogue says, ‘Oh, my God, I’m going to hear anything else. The Web site warns, die,’ but then your body realizes com- “When you first try using plaining isn’t going to help, your SnoreMasker Pro to and it says, ‘Be quiet and calm sleep with your snoring bed down,’ and you melt. You roll partner, you need to make over, toss the mat of the bed, sure he or she understands and sleep soundly.” that you cannot hear them Or your inner dialogue talking to you. Some peo- could say, as Jane’s did, when ple might get mad, thinking she awoke in the middle of their partner is just ignor- the night as usual and lay ing them, even though this on the mat, “It was agony. isn’t the case.” Mrs. A. was I didn’t relax into it, and I more mature than that. Plus, she was out didn’t see the point, and all the non-pres- cold. Mr. A. said that, within minutes, it sure points in my back screamed at sounded as if he were standing under the me, ‘Why are you doing this to us?’ ” waterfall with someone snoring. The next night, he tried a similar earplug, the T1- OMPARED WITH the Sleep Number i8 100 White Noise Sleep Aid and Tinnitus C smart bed I tried recently, my bed is Masker, manufactured by the New Sound an ignoramus ($4,799.97 to $8,549.97). Company ($389). It performed great, if My twentieth-century box spring just lies you like to fall asleep while listening to around, unequipped to inform me each the loud whooshing of a Macy’s Thanks- morning over WiFi how well I slept the giving Day parade balloon being deflated night before. The Sleep Number bases its by someone snoring. The good news report on the usual metrics, such as heart was that the alarm clock was irrelevant, rate and body movement. That’s not its because Mr. A. had been up for hours. only trick: Have you ever tried to find The Dreammate Sleep Inducer is a a comfortable position in bed and con- plastic watchlike item that you strap on cluded it was impossible unless you got thirty minutes before bedtime ($59.95). rid of your shoulder? The air-filled Sleep It sends out faint electrical pulses, which Number minimizes pressure on your body are supposed to jolt you into a state of parts by letting you adjust the firmness calm and also stimulate three acupunc- of your side of the mattress, while your ture points on the inside of your wrist, bedfellow can use his own remote con- which trigger the release of melatonin. trol to inflate or deflate his half of the According to the Web site, it “obeys the bedscape to his liking. What’s more, our Meridian Theory of Chinese Medicine.” remotes allowed us to elevate the head Steve, who tried it out for me, said that and foot sections of our respective terri- it did not help him sleep. “But I sort of tories, providing all the fun of a hospital like the way it feels when it vibrates and bed without having to be sick. gives me tiny shocks on the inside of my If you are hoping to excel at sleeping, wrist,” he said. you’ll need a high-performance pillow, I persuaded my friend Jane, who wakes Eugene Alletto, the C.E.O. of Bedgear, up every morning at three-thirty, to try told me. (His observation that “many peo- out the Bulletproof Sleep Induction Mat ple have never been fitted for a pillow” ($49.95). She is a fan of acupuncture, and was not exactly a shock to me.) You’ll the mat, roughly the size of a flattened also want sheets and a mattress protec- porcupine, is similarly covered with short tor made from “climate-control fabric.” spikes—almost ten thousand of them, Bedgear is one of several new companies clumped onto rows of one-inch disks. that sell technologically advanced bed Dave Asprey, the entrepreneur who came accessories. My friend Marshall’s Pil- up with the idea for the mat, explained the low ID—based on a Web questionnaire

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 59 concerning his size, sleep position, and Roz, who met one of the criteria, took lion subjects suggests that someone who type of mattress—pegged him as a per- it to bed. “It’s really big,” she said. “I sleeps more than eight or nine hours a fect candidate for the Dusk 2.0, a spongy wasn’t sure how it ‘went.’ Figured it day has a thirty per cent higher mor- cushion with a crimson border made from out. Head on the high part, boobs in tality rate than the person who sleeps “nature’s most durable support material, the sort of depressed part under that.” seven to eight hours. Why, then, do derived from the frothed milk sap of nat- She wasn’t a fan: “I like a smallish, soft, we believe that eight hours of sleep is ural rubber trees,” as opposed to fake rub- malleable pillow. This one was not at ideal? Jim Horne, the former head of ber trees ($162). He took it to his moth- all moldable. I felt like my head was the Sleep Research Center in Lough- er’s house in the Hamptons, where the being bent at an unpleasant angle to borough, England, told me that the fal- cacophony of nature tends to keep him the rest of my body.” lacy originated with a study in 1913—of up. After a week with Dusk 2.0, he said, Picture an outsized balaclava designed school-age kids. “There is no evidence “It’s the kind of pillow I like, mostly be- by Claes Oldenburg for E.T. and made that we sleep fewer hours than our par- cause it’s cold and firm. I also like that from swatches of gray Teletubbies. That’s ents and grandparents did, or that we it is red and distinctive.” what the Ostrich Pillow looks like ($99). are any more sleep deprived,” Horne On the other head, there is Pillo 1, a Meant to be worn over the entire head said. “It’s simply that they kept private large, bouncy, latex-foam model from a and neck, it is stufed like a beanbag chair matters to themselves.” company called Hall Innovations ($199). and has an opening for the nose-mouth It’s not my place to call anyone a liar, With a scooped-out hollow for your region, if breathing’s your thing; there are but are you positive that you were up skull, the Pillo 1 would make perfect two holes to tuck your hands into should all night? We have data to show that packing material for a cantaloupe. But, you want to lean forward onto, let’s say, you—I mean self-professed poor sleep- as a sleep aid, it disappointed my friend an airplane tray table. The pillow claims ers—often overestimate the extent of Penny: “I woke up that first morning to make napping possible anywhere— nighttime wakefulness. These days, you with an acute pain in my neck, so I wasn’t your desk, the dinner table, the Davos can wear on your wrist the Basis Peak willing to be a volunteer for this pillow World Economic Forum—provided you Ultimate Fitness and Sleep Tracker, a anymore.” The directions indicate that, don’t mind a sweaty head, extreme hat chunky gizmo that Dick Tracy might because it can take from three to four hair, and possibly being an unsuspect- like ($199.99). It takes note of not just weeks to “break in” (whether it is the pil- ing crime victim. My friend Joan used calories burned and sweat levels (ew!) low or you that is broken in is unclear), it during a massage but sacrificed a few but also your tosses and turns and ab- you should use it at first for only one or minutes of her hour trying to get the sences from bed. Using a technique two hours a night. Isn’t that like waking masseuse to stop laughing. that involves shining L.E.D. light into the patient to give her a sleeping pill? your capillaries and assessing the re- Finally: relief for large-breasted EFORE YOU get too cozy, consider bounding waves with optical sensors, women who like to sleep on their stom- B this: although too little sleep can it also measures the duration of each achs is here. It’s called the Billow Pil- be deadly, too much of it can be even sleep phase (light, deep, and REM). In low, a large fan-shaped cushion with more deadly. A meta-analysis of six- general, Basis Peak has received pos- an indentation in the middle ($200). teen studies involving around 1.4 mil- itive reviews from tech magazines for accuracy, especially for its heart mon- itor. “As for the sleep thing, I think it might be mostly bullshit,” said my friend Billy, who used the tracker for two weeks and ended up with wildly fluctuating “sleep scores” that he couldn’t explain. “It thought I slept for eleven hours one night, which can’t be true, and then twenty-three minutes an- other night, which also can’t be true.” But he couldn’t really see the point of knowing how much he slept anyway. “The first thing you have to know about these devices is that they are anti-conjugal,” Victoria e-mailed from Washington, D.C. For several weeks, she and her boyfriend, David, tried two sleep-tracking gadgets. She used the Beddit Smart Sleep Tracker, whose sen- sor is lodged in a thin strap placed dis- creetly under the top sheet ($149); he used the S+, by ResMed, which picked “He died young.” up his sleep vibes via a transponder that sits next to the bed ($149.99). The alized weekly feedback based on a pa- high-tech S+ looks like something that tient’s reports. John said that he found might pick up and report fluctuations in the program “helpful but not life chang- the Shanghai stock exchange. The Bed- ing,” and that he learned a lot of new dit, Victoria reported, recorded “many fun facts, such as that the most restor- fewer hours of sleep than I would swear ative sleep occurs during the first four that I actually slept.” She might have or five hours of the night, and what- sabotaged the readings, though, by mi- ever else you manage is a bonus. “The grating toward David in her sleep. (Bed- two main takeaways,” he said, “are less dit recommends placing the sensor an stress about not getting a full night of unromantic six inches from the center sleep and a new focus on getting up at of the bed or your partner.) Victoria’s around the same time each morning.” attitude toward sleep is binary (“either An eight-hour stretch of sleep may I did it or I didn’t”); she had no use for not even be natural. In his book “At Day’s the data Beddit provided about her res- Close: Night in Times Past,” the histo- piration, heart rate, amount of snoring, rian Roger Ekirch cites more than five and so forth. hundred references from diaries, court David is a connoisseur of the un- records, medical papers, and literature, conscious, though, and revelled in the demonstrating that our pre-industrial granular data disgorged daily by the ancestors slept in two discrete parcels S+. Victoria said, “David woke me up of time. After what a character in “The during his second week of S+ sleeping Canterbury Tales” called the “firste sleep,” with a jubilant ‘Honey, I did it! I got a you awoke around midnight for an hour sleep score of ninety-eight!’ ” Although or so, and might engage in, say, tending David is a little uncomfortable with the fire, brewing ale, fooling around, com- the ongoing relay to ResMed head- mitting petty larceny, praying. Then you quarters of what goes on in his bed, would sleep again until dawn. he feels that the device has prodded For cofee drinkers who overdo it, there him to prioritize getting better sleep. are morning-after pills that contain ru- “When I wake up to a high S+ rating,” taecarpine, an alkaloid that may speed up he e-mailed, “I know I’m going to feel the rate at which your body breaks down pretty good that day.” cafeine. Or you could skip the cafeine and drink lettuce tea, a remedy for rest- OGNITIVE BEHAVIOR therapy for in- lessness, including restless-leg syndrome. C somnia (C.B.T.-I) is like the tough (It’s all over the Internet, so it must be teacher in high school—she gives a lot true.) Dennis, who takes three naps a of homework but you end up better for day, is always up for another (“Sleeping it. This pragmatic approach to combat- is so cool—it prepares you for the after- ting insomnia focuses on changing the life”), so he tested this remedy. Twenty behaviors and anxieties that keep you up. minutes a day for three weeks, he boiled Several studies suggest that it is a more romaine lettuce to make his daily gallon efective remedy than soporific drugs. A of tea. At the end of Week Two, he got review that looked at data from twenty so weary boiling lettuce that he took a clinical trials found that C.B.T.-I cut morning nap. Case closed. the time it took the average subject to Being well rested is important, but drift of to sleep by about twenty min- if you have a high-minded value sys- utes and increased sleep duration by al- tem there is something even more cru- most thirty minutes. But you have to cial: looking well rested. So I tried the work at it: subjects keep a sleep jour- Eye Slack Haruka ($44.99), a new device nal, practice relaxation techniques, and from Japan that works like a vibrator for learn to be less anxious about their anx- the cheekbones. You lean back, place the iety. Exhausted yet? two boomerang-shaped pieces of pink John, who is prone to waking at 4 A.M., plastic under your eyes, and wait as they enrolled in the five-week Conquering jiggle away your under-eye bags in just Insomnia program, which is taught on- three minutes a day. To my great sur- line by Dr. Gregg Jacobs, a sleep special- prise, they worked. My fat pouches dis- ist at the Sleep Disorders Center at the appeared—or, rather, they seem to have University of Massachusetts Medical migrated southward an inch. In their School ($39.95). Jacobs provides person- place? An eye infection I lost sleep over. 

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 61 A REPORTER AT LARGE THE BOUVIER AFFAIR How an art-world insider made a fortune by being discreet.

BY SAM KNIGHT

HE GENEVA Freeport, which tains a blue-collar feel. There were signs storage facility for the international élite. may be the world’s most valu- to the showers. Men stood around in Under the freeport’s rules, objects could T able storage facility, consists of aprons and smoked. Everything about remain in untaxed limbo, in theory, for- seven beige warehouses and a large grain the place tells you to look the other way. ever. Treasures came and they did not silo in La Praille, an industrial zone a The freeport began, in 1888, as a group leave. A generation ago, these goods were short tram ride from the city’s lakeside of sheds near the waterfront. It was one cars, wine, and gold. More recently, they panorama of banks and expensive ho- of countless similar spaces around the have been works of art. tels. One recent morning, rain was fall- world, where customs authorities allow Yves Bouvier was among the first to ing on the chain-link fence that runs duties and taxes to be suspended until see the potential of the freeport as an ad- through the property, and snow was goods reach their final destination. In junct to the art market. A blond, compact visible on the mountains to the south. time, however, the Geneva Freeport be- man of fifty-two, Bouvier is the owner of Iris scanners, magnetic locks, and a se- came legendary. It grew very large, and Natural Le Coultre, a moving and stor- curity system known as Cerberus guard its oicial status—the freeport is eighty- age company and the largest tenant in the freeport’s storerooms, whose con- six per cent owned by the local govern- the complex. For more than a hundred tents are said to be insured for a hun- ment—and kinship with the opaque years, the firm shipped everything from dred billion dollars, but the facility re- traditions of Swiss banking made it a citrus fruit to industrial machinery; during

62 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 ILLUSTRATION BY BEN WISEMAN the First World War, Natural Le Coultre only after he had gone ahead to make and a former chairman of Impression- supplied prisoners of war with Red Cross sure there was absolutely nothing to see. ist and modern art at Christie’s, told me. food parcels. Since 1997, however, when Specialist logistics companies, like Nat- “Ninety-nine per cent of the time, you Bouvier took over the firm from his fa- ural Le Coultre, are the quiet butlers of are going to show it with a transit agent.” ther, it has handled only paintings and the art world. They operate deep inside This intimacy means that, once you sculpture. Bouvier refurbished the com- it but are not quite of it. When an art- find your shipper, you tend to stick with pany’s premises at the freeport, which ist has made a sculpture out of butter, or him. Relationships last for decades, built include two showrooms, and encour- scalpels, or half a passenger jet, it is up on trust and a sense, usually unspoken, of aged a framer to open a workshop in the to a shipper to get it from Hong Kong absolute limits. In sixteenth-century Ven- building. Since 2013, Natural Le Coultre to Miami in the same condition as when ice, diplomats were instructed to employ has rented more than twenty thousand it left, and to make no fuss. To do their illiterate valets, who would be unable to square metres in storage space and has work, shippers must know many things. read any secret documents they were asked had well over a million objects in its care. They are given records of private sales to carry. A transit agent “should by de- Every item passes through a single and the names of collectors, in order to fault be a blind man,” Seydoux told me. packing room, where it is unwrapped, navigate customs. In the course of a typ- “That is the very nature of his job.” Ev- photographed, and studied for damage. ical day, stopping by the homes of deal- erything works fine, as long as people stay On the morning I visited, a Bob Dylan ers and the back rooms of galleries, they within their allotted roles. Seydoux said, painting had arrived, along with a Pi- learn who answers the door and the phone “You can’t win somebody’s trust by saying casso bronze from Greece. There were number of the assistant, and see the other you are blind and then open your eyes.” hammers hanging in order of size, and a pictures on the walls. The shippers’ pro- stack of crates containing works by Léon fessional indiference means that they are VES BOUVIER started handling art in Pourtau, a minor Impressionist. Ramon often in the room at moments of extreme Y his late teens. He worked at Nat- Casais, who has worked in the freeport commercial sensitivity. “Imagine that I ural Le Coultre during his vacations, for the past thirty years, agreed to show am in Basel and I need to show a client earning money in order to ski. When I me a corridor of locked storeroom doors a painting,” Thomas Seydoux, a dealer asked him recently to describe himself

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 63 panies—Diva, Blancaflor, Eagle Over- seas—to enable galleries to buy specific works and mask the identity of other in- vestors in a transaction. Bouvier is an op- portunist. Pitch him and he will decide if he is in or out. “It is always a question of what I will earn on the deal,” he said. Within a few years, Bouvier was buy- ing and selling pictures on a serious scale, interacting almost solely with other deal- ers. “When you buy, it is always to sell,” he said. “You always have the buyer be- fore you have the seller.” On August 16, 2000, he bought a Paul Gauguin land- scape, “Paysage aux Trois Arbres,” from Peintures Hermès, a Swiss gallery asso- ciated with the Wildenstein family of art dealers, for $9.5 million. Two weeks later, he sold the picture to Mandarin Trad- ing, a Bahamas-based art fund, for $11.3 million, making a profit of sixteen per cent. Mandarin Trading later sued the “You have to get up early tomorrow, too? We have so much in common!” Wildensteins for fraud, alleging that it was the victim of a scam to inflate the value of the painting. The case was dis- •• missed in 2011. I once asked Bouvier what drew him to particular propositions. as a child, he replied, “Turbulent.” He had no formal training, just what passed “In the mountains, it was the same,” he grew up in Avully, a small village on the through his hands. “It started with the replied. “I go in the place which is the border with France. He had a sister, who touch,” he said. “You have all the pano- most complicated, the most risky place.” was born disabled and later died. As a ply: small, huge, it’s with value, with no boy, Bouvier was withdrawn. He spent value. You have everything, so you learn.” MITRY RYBOLOVLEV, a Russian oli- most of his time outdoors, where he was Shipping also introduced Bouvier to D garch, first met Bouvier in August, brave—reckless, almost—when it came the complicated lives of the rich—their 2002, during a visit to the Geneva Free- to physical activities. “Any kind of sport taxes and their divorces—and the other port to pick up a painting by Marc Cha- that was extreme, he liked,” Tony Rey- ancillary trades that help the art world go gall. Rybolovlev was in his late thirties nard, a friend of Bouvier’s since he was around: restorers, framers, hired experts, and worth nearly a billion dollars. He twelve, told me. He skied like a maniac operators of tiny galleries in Paris cling- had moved his wife, Elena, and young and raced go-karts on the roads at night. ing on from sale to sale. He realized they daughter to Switzerland in 1995, after He dreamed of opening a bar and ski all had needs of their own. When he took acquiring control of Uralkali, a state- shop in the mountains. over the running of Natural Le Coul- owned potash-mining company, at the Bouvier’s father, Jean-Jacques, started tre from his father, at the age of thirty- age of twenty-nine. He then went back as an apprentice at Natural Le Coultre in four, Bouvier sold of the company’s gen- to Russia, where he spent eleven months 1953. In 1982, he was able to buy the com- eral moving business and specialized in in custody after being accused of order- pany. Yves, having dropped out of college, art. Unlike other shippers, however, he ing the contract killing of a rival. (He joined him, and brought his appetite for never considered stopping at logistics. was later cleared of all charges.) risk to the unlikely domain of freight. Bou- Quietly, he began his own forays into Rybolovlev spoke no English, no vier combines a Calvinist reserve with a de- the marketplace. “I was in the shadows,” French, and no German. When he and light in doing the unthinkable. “If you tell he said. The first picture that Bouvier Elena arrived in Geneva, they felt iso- me it is not possible, I will say, O.K., I will bought was a small gouache by Max lated, but they soon befriended a Bulgar- do it,” he told me once. He took on spec- Ernst from an auction house in Geneva. ian publisher named Tania Rappo, who tacular jobs—the transport of an eighty- (He has a collection of twentieth-cen- was the wife of Elena’s dentist. Rappo five-ton industrial furnace, a U.B.S. oice tury furniture and design.) Alongside his was fifteen years older than the Rybolov- move in Geneva—but was also drawn to work at Natural Le Coultre, he started to levs, tall, gregarious, and fun. She was what was fragile, beautiful, and expensive. dabble, making himself useful to the peo- working on an encyclopedia at the time, Bouvier speaks an imperfect, gestural En- ple he knew. Bouvier financed purchases but she quickly became the Russians’ glish, but he explained that becoming a that dealers couldn’t aford on their own. all-around helper and confidante. She shipper allowed him to immerse himself He sorted out cash flow and bills. He be- secured access to the city’s sports clubs, in “the feeling and the diiculty of art.” He came adept at setting up ofshore com- introduced them to friends, and helped

64 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 them to buy an apartment in Paris. shipping, condition reports, restoration, bolovlev’s family trusts, as the “Buyer.” The Rybolovlevs lived in Cologny, making copies, framing, due diligence, Personal invoices from Bouvier, cover- one of Geneva’s smartest neighborhoods. insurance. For these services, Bouvier ing what he called his frais habituels— Their mansion had picture lights on the would charge an extra two per cent of his usual costs—arrived separately. walls, which had been installed for the the purchase price of any painting he To Rybolovlev, Bouvier personified previous owner’s art collection. When the sold them. Privately, he promised Rappo the idea of a colorless Swiss professional. Rybolovlevs decided to buy paintings to that, if he ever sold Rybolovlev anything, “I would not call him a great personal- go under the lights, Rappo brought them he would give her a commission, for in- ity,” Rybolovlev told me. “But he was to Christie’s, but they asked her to look troducing him in the first place. calm, discreet, and intelligent.” We were for works herself. “I said, ‘Listen, I am He was aware that the proposal was speaking on the phone. Rybolovlev was in not very good,’ ” Rappo told me. “I knew audacious. Major buyers typically build Miami and his lawyer, Tetiana Bersheda, it was quite a tricky world.” Still, after collections through several dealers and was in Monaco, translating. Rybolovlev several months of work, Rappo arranged auction houses, knowing that they will had worked with bankers in Geneva for the purchase of the Chagall painting “Le be charged the maximum the market can years, and he projected the same image Cirque,” for six million dollars. When the bear. To protect their interests, many also onto Bouvier. He called him his pred- painting arrived at Natural Le Coultre’s employ an art adviser or consultant, who stavitel’, Russian for “representative,” in facility at the freeport, Rappo went with works for them and is paid a retainer or the art world, and thought of him like the Rybolovlevs to see it. a commission—in the region of five per the other professionals—accountants, boat Bouvier was waiting. He introduced cent—on the works that they acquire. skippers—whom he employed. Operat- himself as the head of Natural Le Coul- Very rarely are all these roles performed ing through Bouvier and M.E.I. Invest tre and took them to the showroom. The by one person. ofered the Russian valuable discretion Russians had no idea that, as part of his “It is not usual,” Bouvier said. “But in the art market. Access to the oligarch other dealings, Bouvier had also been an it is not forbidden.” Other art dealers was strictly controlled. “Besides his law- intermediary in the Chagall deal, which told me that they have heard of sim- yer and his hairdresser, I don’t think he had been a messy transaction, involving ilar arrangements but that they don’t sees normal people at all,” Rappo once several middlemen. According to Bou- last long. Collectors gossip as much as told me. Rybolovlev assumed that the vier, Rybolovlev arrived in a bad tem- anyone else, comparing commissions, two-per-cent fee was Bouvier’s com- per. The Chagall lacked an authentic- double-checking prices. The Rybolov- mission. He was impressed by Natural ity certificate—a document, typically levs, for their part, seemed impressed. Le Coultre’s premises in the freeport, signed by an art scholar, that guaran- According to Rappo, Rybolovlev turned which put Bouvier in contact with the tees that a work is real. Rybolovlev was to her outside the freeport after their owners of expensive art works. “He had afraid that he might have been ripped of. first meeting and said, “This is the man insider information,” Rybolovlev said. Bouvier tried to calm him down. “I we need.” (He denies this.) A year later, “He knew the collectors without inter- knew this painting,” he told me. “It was in August, 2003, the shipper sold the mediaries. He knew what was where.” a good painting.” Even though he was oligarch Vincent van Gogh’s Bouvier needed a translator ostensibly just in charge of the storage “Paysage Avec un Olivier,” to speak with Rybolovlev, but facility, he ofered to help. “I will find the for seventeen million dollars. he had a sense of his person- certificate for you, and I will be quiet,” ality. “He was a person quick he said. When the Russians left, Bou- HE RELATIONSHIP between in the decision, I feel that,” vier picked up the phone and called T art dealer and collector is Bouvier told me. There were the previous owner of the Chagall. He particular and charged. The artists the Russian admired, got the certificate a few days later and dealer is mentor and salesman. like Modigliani and Monet, called Rappo. He asked her to set up a He informs his client’s desires and those he could not stand, proper meeting with the Rybolovlevs at while subjecting himself to like Dali. Having a buyer of their house in Cologny. This time, Bou- them at the same time. The his magnitude enabled Bou- vier told me, he ofered them his ser- collector has money, but he is vier to operate at a higher level vices more generally. He could protect also vulnerable. Relationships start, pros- of the art market, but it did not change them during their adventures in the art per, and fail for any number of reasons. the way he did business. “It is not an old market, he promised. And he could also It is not always obvious where power man in Russia drinking vodka,” Bou- find them art. “I have the information,” lies. Over time, each one can convince vier said. He set out to make as much he said. “I can sell you paintings.” himself that he has created the other. money as possible. “For me, I will be According to Bouvier, the nature of The first four paintings that Bouvier clear,” he told me. “If I buy for two and his relationship with the Rybolovlevs sold to Rybolovlev were covered by con- I can sell for eleven, I will sell for eleven.” was clear from the beginning. Although tracts drawn up by Lenz & Staehelin, He went after sensational paintings. he had seldom worked with private cli- one of Switzerland’s largest law firms. In October, 2004, Bouvier acquired ents before, he would be their dealer. He The contracts listed Bouvier, through “Les Noces de Pierrette,” by Picasso, would also take care of all their art-related a Hong Kong-based company named which, at $51.3 million, had set a record logistics. Building a collection involves a M.E.I. Invest, as the “Seller” and Mikhail for the artist when it previously sold, in thousand small, complex tasks: storage, Sazonov, who was the director of Ry- 1989. The washed-out, Blue Period

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 65 masterpiece had been bought by a Jap- longtime partner in Geneva, usually trav- provide. But Bouvier’s development in anese real- estate developer, who wanted elled alone. He paints these occasions as Singapore carried within it two ideas. to put it on display at a racetrack. But grim, commercial obligations. “If there The first is that freeports will become the developer went bust, and the paint- is a social party of your client, you will hubs in the sixty-billion-dollar interna- ing had changed hands several times go,” he said. Rybolovlev thought that he tional art market, destinations in them- as collateral for loans, depreciating in was doing his staid art adviser a favor. “I selves—places for scholars, restorers, in- value. Bouvier bought the work from thought that he had a rather boring life surers, art-finance specialists, consultants, the Manhattan art dealer William Ac- in Switzerland,” he told me. and dealers. The second idea is that the quavella and sold it to Rybolovlev for The income from his dealing enabled ultra- rich don’t want just another ware- $43.8 million. His two-per-cent fee Bouvier to expand his storage facilities. house. “If you buy a painting for a hun- would have been nearly nine hundred For several years, he had been looking dred million, what do you want? You thousand dollars. Rappo’s cut came to just under $2.5 million.

N HIS day job, Bouvier remained the I president of Natural Le Coultre. Hid- den behind company names and, often, dealers working on his behalf, he tended to disguise his role in transactions. “To be invisible is the best way to make busi- ness,” he said. Rybolovlev was a huge cli- ent, but in the early years his purchases were sporadic. Bouvier works constantly, and he becomes restless unless there is something new to occupy him. “Re- laxing is the same as working,” he says. In 2004, Bouvier launched an art fair in Moscow. The following year, fifty thou- sand people came, and there was a gala in the Kremlin. Tania Rappo was the fair’s vice-president. The logistics required helicopters and dawn convoys of trucks through Red Square and drew on all of Bouvier’s organizational flair. Friends noticed that he had also sharpened his image. Bouvier never used to wear suits, but now he bore the trappings of an in- ternational businessman, wearing tailor- made shirts with his initials, “Y.E.B.,” and numerals on the cufs showing the Yves Bouvier worked in shipping, a field based on trust and unspoken limits. year and the season each shirt was made. The Moscow World Fine Art Fair to build a freeport outside Europe sim- want to feel well,” Bouvier said. “Why never turned a profit, but it widened Bou- ilar to the one in Geneva. In 2005, he else do people travel in first class?” vier’s network, and it impressed Rybolov- settled on Singapore. In 2008, Bouvier In Singapore, Bouvier specified each lev. “The fair was like a brushstroke to decided to base himself in the country component, from the fire-resistant walls, his portrait,” the Russian said. “It demon- as well. The Singapore Freeport, which coiled through with steel, to the height of strated that he had connections.” It also required new legislation to be passed the doors: three metres, to admit the larg- deepened Bouvier’s relationship with by the national parliament, opened in est contemporary installations. “I chose Rappo. According to Rybolovlev, Rappo 2010. Bouvier put Tony Reynard, his everything,” he said. “The door handles. soon became a constant advocate for Bou- childhood friend, in charge. The free- I’m obsessive about that.” He used a light- vier’s services, claiming that he was the port, which abuts the city’s international ing artist named Johanna Grawunder, best-connected man in the art business. airport, is an over-engineered hybrid whose work he collects, and commis- Rappo’s endorsement—she was the god- of vault and temple. It cost Bouvier a sioned an enormous sculpture, “La Cage mother of Rybolovlev’s younger daugh- hundred million dollars to build. At sans Frontières,” by the Israeli artist and ter, Anna—helped give Bouvier extraor- first, no bank would finance it. “They designer Ron Arad, to stand in the atrium. dinary access to the family. He joined the thought we were loonies,” Reynard said. The opening of the Singapore Free- board of Elena’s foundation and was in- A freeport ofers few tax advantages port, and its immediate success—Chris - vited to birthday parties in Hawaii and and scarcely any security features that tie’s took a space—brought Bouvier the Greek islands. Bouvier, who has a a standard bonded warehouse cannot international attention. The facilities

66 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 PHOTOGRAPHS BY JULIAN FAULHABER tapped into a fascination with the tastes two hundred and fifty million dollars in New York, where, Rybolovlev told me, he and financial shenanigans of the one compensation, and the inquiry recalled experienced a profound emotional reac- per cent. Bouvier opened a second, the authorities’ pursuit of other state- tion—“a vibration”—in its presence. He slightly smaller freeport in Luxem- owned assets that had been question- bought the picture for $127.5 million. bourg, in September, 2014, and The ably acquired in the nineteen-nineties. Economist noted his role in the devel- The pressure persuaded Rybolovlev VERY TRANSACTION at the top end opment of “Über warehouses for the that his assets were no longer safe in E of the private art market involves a ultra-rich.” He made plans to replicate Russia. In June, 2010, he sold his con- chain, a cast of characters that stretches the model in Dubai and to act as a con- trolling stake in Uralkali for an esti- from the buyer to the seller: finders, sultant for a vast new project in Beijing. mated five billion dollars. This sudden agents, lawyers, lenders. It is rare for the Bouvier’s rivals in the art-logistics influx of cash brought its own compli- principals to know everyone involved, trade watched, fascinated and somewhat cations, however. By this time, every and it can be improper to ask. Bou- bemused. Art shippers are unshowy folk. one of Rybolovlev’s financial maneu- vier was a master at making chains— They didn’t understand why Bouvier and vers was being scrutinized by his es- short, long, simple, or twisted, depend- Natural Le Coultre were making such tranged wife and her lawyers. The oli- ing on the deal. If he knew that a seller a fuss over their warehouses. One rival, garch instructed Bouvier to find him would prefer an approach from an auc- who visited the Singapore Freeport and “mobile assets.” tion house, he would send someone, usu- saw the Arad in the atrium, told me, “If He went to work. Between 2003 and ally from Sotheby’s. Otherwise, Bou- a client of mine walked into my oice 2007, Bouvier had sold the Russian six art vier would send an intermediary. Often and saw a five-million-dollar sculpture, works. Between 2008 and 2013, he sold this was a Corsican named Jean-Marc he would assume I was charging him him twenty-eight. He summoned every Peretti, who was investigated for run- too much.” Others couldn’t work out hunch, every contested inheritance, every ning an illegal gambling circle in Paris where Bouvier was getting the money. paid informant, every whispered tax prob- in 2009. Bouvier is attracted to outsid- Natural Le Coultre’s profits had histor- lem gathered from two decades operating ers in the art world. “The best people ically been a few million dollars a year. inside an art market that had never paid are just good businesspeople—they are “Of course, we wondered,” one told me. him much attention. “If nobody knows butchers,” he said. Bouvier helped Per- “We are not billionaires. And to build you, you take all the information,” he told etti open a gallery in the freeport in Ge- freeports you need to be a billionaire.” me. “It is to be like an octopus.” neva and trusted him to carry out the Rybolovlev had a taste for Modigli- most sensitive transactions. (Peretti de- YBOLOVLEV WAS the billionaire whose ani nudes, for example. Bouvier knew clined to speak with me.) R money was building the freeports. that Steve Cohen, the New York hedge- When a deal with the seller was in From 2008 onward, his life and finances fund manager, had one of the finest, sight, Bouvier would then agree on his became increasingly unsettled, but the “Nu Couché au Coussin Bleu,” but also own price with Rybolovlev, which was net result was that his spending on that he had no plans to sell. In No- often tens of millions of dollars higher. art dramatically increased. That year, vember, 2011, however, Bouvier learned He conducted these negotiations via he and Elena separated. According to through an informant that Cohen had e-mail, in French, with Mikhail Sazo- Bouvier, Elena had always been con- just bought four Matisse bronzes from nov, Rybolovlev’s adviser. Over the years, servative. With her out of the way, Ry- Sotheby’s in a private sale for more than these e-mails became increasingly fa- bolovlev seemed to have fewer inhi- a hundred million dollars. Approaching miliar, but Bouvier always maintained bitions. Through a network of trusts, Cohen through Lionel Pissarro, a dealer a crucial legerdemain—suggesting that he bought Donald Trump’s mansion in Paris, Bouvier managed to buy the he was acting on the Russian’s behalf to in Palm Beach, Sanford Weill’s apart- Modigliani, for $93.5 million. secure the best deal possible from the ment on Central Park West, and the is- In 2013, he secured a Gustav Klimt seller, rather than that he was the one land of Skorpios, in Greece, which used masterpiece, “Wasserschlangen II,” that selling to Rybolovlev. “I just got a super to belong to Aristotle Onassis. And he had been seized by the Nazis. The day and last price of 14 million euros, be- pressed forward with his art collection. after lawyers concluded a lengthy dispute cause the seller had an opportunity to Rybolovlev had other reasons to over its ownership, Bouvier sold it to Ry- invest,” he wrote of a Toulouse-Lautrec spread his money around. In late Octo- bolovlev for a hundred and eighty-three that he obtained in February, 2013. “It’s ber, 2008, the oligarch was summoned million dollars. He bought a Gauguin done at 25,” he wrote of a late Picasso, to Moscow, where he was told that a that had not been sold since the Sec- “Joueur de Flûte et Femme Nue,” which government investigation into an acci- ond World War and a lost Leonardo da he bought in Paris in October of 2010. dent at his potash company, Uralkali, was Vinci, “Salvator Mundi,” that had been Bouvier told me that such blurring of being reopened. Uralkali had previously sensationally rediscovered. On its display who exactly owns what, and when a trans- been cleared of any liability after an in- at the National Gallery in London, the action occurred, is commonplace in the cident, in 2006, in which a mine in the da Vinci became one of the most talked- art market. When you walk into a gallery, Ural Mountains flooded with brine and about pictures in the world. According you never know what the dealer is sell- a huge sinkhole opened in the ground. to Rappo, Rybolovlev wanted it for the ing on consignment, what he owns out- The fresh investigation caused Uralka- wall of his study. Bouvier brought the right, or how prices have been arrived at. li’s stock to plummet. The company paid painting to the Russian’s apartment in “It is not lying,” he said. “There is always

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 67 a part of the story which is true.” But fifties, Rothko began experimenting with the previous year. Quoting Anthony Bouvier was ruthless in exploiting what powdered pigments, solvents, and egg Crichton- Stuart, a London-based dealer, was left unsaid. “Joueur de Flûte et Femme to lend extra force to the colors in his the article reported that the painting had Nue,” which Bouvier sold to Rybolov- canvases. He wanted viewers of his pic- sold privately for between seventy-five lev for twenty-five million euros, he had tures to feel as if they were inside them. and eighty million dollars. Crichton- bought the day before for just three and When Bouvier drew back the curtains, Stuart was merely repeating rumors that a half million. He made a sixty-million- the painting seemed to explode in front he had heard, but the article unwittingly dollar profit on the Klimt. of his eyes. revealed the scale of Bouvier’s profit Bouvier did not explain to me how The Rothko arrived at the Geneva margins: he had sold the da Vinci to Ry- he handled the cash flow for his trans- Freeport in June. Bouvier went to see it on bolovlev for almost fifty million more. actions, but dealers often grant clients his own. He had the painting placed next Bouvier read the article the day that it a few months to settle large invoices. to a window, to enjoy the natural light. “It appeared. No one called from Rybolovlev’s As soon as a sale was agreed with Ry- is impossible for people to imagine this oice. He remembered the oligarch’s de- bolovlev, an invoice would usually go kind of deal,” he told me. Bouvier had lighted reaction to the painting, and that out from M.E.I. Invest to one of two every reason to feel euphoric. The Moueix he had been willing to pay even more. Rybolovlev family trusts, Accent De- family had agreed to sell “No. 6 (Violet, Bouvier also had other things on his mind. light or Xitrans Finance, both based in Green and Red)” for eighty million dol- The Luxembourg Freeport was nearing the British Virgin Islands. The Rus- lars. He had sold it Rybolovlev for a hun- completion, and he was attempting to sian paid fast. Bouvier insisted that he dred and eighty-nine million. There was close the deal on the Rothko. For the first always bore the financial risk for all his Peretti’s cut to worry about—some five time, Rybolovlev was proving a somewhat transactions, if only for a short time. “If million—and the usual commission for awkward client. He paid the first twenty I can switch it in one minute,” he said, Rappo, but Bouvier was about to earn a million dollars in cash but wanted to sell “I am the happiest man in the world.” hundred million dollars on a single sale. other works from his collection to fund He believed that he was building a the rest of the purchase. The decision dis- magnificent collection. Great dealers are ARELY ANYONE knew about Bouvier’s mayed Bouvier. Selling works at the top judged on the quality and the person- B dealings: a handful of gallery own- end of the art market is just as delicate ality of the works that they acquire. In ers across Europe, his lawyer, and Sothe- as buying them. He pleaded for patience. 2011, as a surprise for Rybolovlev, Bou- by’s private-sales department. His staf During the summer, Rybolovlev fell se- vier commissioned Joachim Pissarro, a at Natural Le Coultre noticed the art riously ill. He was treated for cancer, and leading scholar of Impressionism and works stored on his account but insist sufered post-surgery complications. “I twentieth-century art, and the brother that they were never told more. Their was at a near-unconscious state,” he told of Lionel, the Paris dealer, to write a boss was rarely in the oice; Bouvier me. Bouvier agreed to take a Modigliani catalogue of the collection. travelled constantly, investing. He con- sculpture, “Tête,” and to knock sixty mil- And there were moments of exulta- trols more than forty companies, which lion dollars of the price of the Rothko. tion. For years, Bouvier had dreamed of cover a bewildering range of interests, But it still left him far short of the figure buying Mark Rothko’s “No. 6 (Violet, from R4, a new complex of galleries they had agreed on. Green and Red),” an abstract column that on the site of an old Renault factory in Rybolovlev recovered, and, a few the artist painted in 1951, while work- Paris, to Smartcopter, an idea for devel- months later, on November 22, 2014, ing at Brooklyn College. The painting oping a low-cost helicopter. His man- he turned forty-eight. He invited Bou- was on the cover of the catalogue rai- ner discouraged conversation. Reynard vier, as usual, to celebrate his birthday, sonné, an oicial inventory of Roth- told me that he never inquired where and during the afternoon, at his pent- ko’s work, and had been owned by the the money for the Singapore Freeport house in Monaco, the two men discussed Moueix family, a French wine- producing was coming from. “It is a question you his collection. The price of the da Vinci dynasty, for decades. One day, Rybolov- don’t ask,” he told me. “Because you came up. Rybolovlev asked whether lev saw the image on the catalogue and know that he will not answer.” he had paid too much. He didn’t ask told Bouvier that he would do anything But the transactions that Bouvier was about Bouvier’s profit, just whether he to acquire the painting. Through Per- orchestrating were the source of furious had overpaid. Bouvier told me that he etti, Bouvier had been quietly cultivat- gossip in the art world. Rybolovlev had ofered to ask an expert to appraise the ing the Moueix family for years, buying become known as a top buyer, despite painting’s value. He was confident that their wine and lesser works from their his eforts to keep a low profile. Who it was worth more than a hundred mil- collection, in the hope of one day secur- was helping him, though, was a mys- lion dollars. Rybolovlev promised to set- ing the Rothko. tery. Seydoux, the Geneva dealer, met tle up on the Rothko by the end of the In early 2014, Bouvier learned that Rybolovlev once but never managed to year, but he didn’t understand why his they might be willing to sell. Years ear- forge a relationship. “We tried desper- middleman seemed unwilling, or un- lier, he had flown to the family’s châ- ately,” he said. “Nobody knew who re- able, to sell works as easily as he bought teau, in Bordeaux, to view the painting, ally had access to him.” them. “This made me wonder if every- which was kept in a little-used living On March 9, 2014, the Times pub- thing had been clean,” he said. room, where the light was blocked out lished a piece of industry gossip about That night, Rybolovlev threw a party by heavy curtains. In the early nineteen- the sale of da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” at the Yacht Club de Monaco. Since 2011,

68 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 the Russian has been the owner of A.S. ing a huge margin on each and every the “seller would be suicidal” if Rybolov- Monaco, the local soccer team, and the painting struck him as a breathtaking lev didn’t pay soon, even though he had party began after that evening’s match, a con. Rybolovlev thought about calling settled his own afairs with the Moueix 2–2 draw with Caen. Bouvier was stuck Tania Rappo, but he hesitated, wonder- family months earlier. That evening, Ry- at a table far from the host, who chat- ing how much she knew. On January 9, bolovlev and Rappo met at his apart- ted with the Prince. There was bad strip- 2015, Bersheda, Rybolovlev’s lawyer, filed ment in Monaco. According to Rappo, tease. (Rybolovlev denies this.) Bouvier a criminal complaint in Monaco against he asked for her opinion on what he stepped out onto the terrace. Rappo was Bouvier and “all participants,” accusing should do. Bersheda secretly recorded there, and she thought that he seemed the dealer of fraud. The complaint in- the conversation. A meeting with Bou- upset. Rybolovlev came out as well, and cluded extracts from Bouvier’s e-mails vier was arranged for the twenty-fifth. she asked him what had happened. “Tell and cited the sales of the da Vinci and It was a Wednesday. Bouvier flew by him not to worry,” the Russian said, in- dicating Bouvier. “We’re still friends.”

HE END of the year came. Bouvier T was still waiting for his money. Ry- bolovlev was on vacation in St. Barts, in the Caribbean. On December 30th, he was at a lunch for around ten people at Eden Rock, a beachside hotel. A mutual friend had invited Sandy Heller, a New York art consultant who was vacation- ing on the island. Heller’s best-known client is Steve Cohen, the hedge-fund manager and collector. Heller had never met Rybolovlev, but there were rumors that Cohen’s Modigliani nude, which he had sold in 2011, had been bought by the Russian. By way of conversation—and speak- ing through Rybolovlev’s girlfriend, who translated—Heller mentioned the pur- chase. “We miss it to this day,” he said. Rybolovlev was startled to encounter someone on the other end of one of his art transactions. He asked, in front of the table, “How much did you sell it for?” The question was unusual. Private sales are bound by confidentiality agree- ments. But Heller seemed moved by the Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian tycoon, called Bouvier his “representative.” Russian’s unease. A guest at the lunch told me that Rybolovlev was “like a baby the Modigliani, on which Bouvier was private jet from Geneva. The meeting, at standing in traic” during the conver- accused of making around seventy mil- the Belle Époque, an apartment block sation. Heller sent a message to Cohen, lion dollars in “undue” profits. overlooking the water, was at 10 A.M. asking permission to tell Rybolovlev Unaware, Bouvier carried on as be- Bouvier arrived early. It was a beauti- the sale price—$93.5 million—and he fore, tracking paintings, trying to close ful morning, and he walked around the relayed it to the Russian the following the gap on the Rothko. Joachim Pissar- marina, looking at the boats. (Bouvier day. Rybolovlev had bought the paint- ro’s catalogue, prepared in secret, was al- owns a thirty-five-metre motor yacht, ing from Bouvier for a hundred and most ready. The Russian began to move which he sails around the Mediterra- eighteen million dollars. his collection out of Natural Le Coul- nean.) When he walked into the lobby Rybolovlev didn’t speak at first. For tre’s storerooms in Singapore and Ge- of the Belle Époque, there were eight twelve years, he told me, he had be- neva. Bouvier assumed that this was be- figures dressed in black. One of them lieved that Bouvier was his agent, act- cause of the divorce. On February 21st, showed a Monaco police I.D. and asked ing on his behalf in the art market and he sent Sazonov, Rybolovlev’s adviser, if he was Yves Bouvier. When he nod- paid well for his services. Bouvier’s two- an eight-page e-mail outlining poten- ded, another oicer put him in hand- per-cent charge on the roughly two bil- tial sales from the collection, but he de- cufs and led him back outside, into an lion dollars that Rybolovlev had spent manded full payment for the Rothko unmarked car. No one spoke. on art since 2003 came to forty million. by the end of the month. Adopting his Bouvier’s first thought was that he The idea that Bouvier might be mak- habitual language, Bouvier warned that had been caught up in a larger raid on

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 69 Rybolovlev. He was taken to Mona- “How could he then buy a painting for lice. Bouvier denies any wrongdoing. co’s main police station; he assumed he twenty million euros?” the Russian asked. Around this time, I spent a day at the would be out by lunchtime. At 1:13 P.M., According to Bouvier, Rybolovlev Luxembourg Freeport. The building is he was led into an interview room for avoided eye contact for the entire con- made of sixty-five hundred tons of con- the first time and asked to name his versation, except at one moment. “But, crete. Heavy doors are locked with six- profession. “Businessman,” he replied. Yves, these markups are worth a Boe- digit codes. David Arendt, the manager, He learned that he was under in- ing,” he said. Later, Bouvier reflected on put a brave face on the trouble massing vestigation for fraud and money laun- this. “I think in his head the problem was around his main investor. The chairman dering. In the weeks after Rybolovlev’s not that Bouvier made money—it was of the freeport, an associate of Bouvier’s complaint, H.S.B.C. had revealed to that he made too much money,” he told in Paris named Olivier Thomas, had been prosecutors in Monaco that Bouvier and me. He said that, at the end of the con- questioned a few days earlier about the Tania Rappo had a joint bank account frontation, with the room still crowded, Picassos. I asked Arendt when he had in the principality. According to the po- he ofered to buy the Modigliani. “I am learned that Bouvier was an art dealer. lice, this suggested a possible conspiracy ready to pay,” he said. “I am still ready He replied, “On February 26th, when to launder the proceeds of the art sales. to deal.” Rybolovlev walked out. I read it in the Daily Telegraph.” Alain Over the years, Rappo’s commissions Mestat, an art-finance specialist based had amounted to more than a hundred OUVIER WAS released on a ten-mill ion- in the freeport, sat stunned in a show- million dollars. H.S.B.C. later admit- B euro bond the following day. He room. “It’s like the black swan,” he told ted that this was a mistake: the name went to a hotel and ordered a bottle me. “Not expected.” In the bowels of the on the account was Jacques Rappo, Ta- of Cos d’Estournel, an expensive Bor- building, I glanced into one of Natural nia’s husband, but Tania was drawn into deaux. He was convinced that the Rus- Le Coultre’s storerooms and saw a heap the investigation. She was arrested in her sian had not expected him to make bail. of crates marked “Fragile” and bound for apartment. Two policewomen walked in Because Monaco is so small, and the risk Singapore. A man inside saw me and while she was having a massage. of flight is so high, suspects in crimi- closed the door. Rappo saw the name of Rybolovlev’s nal cases are often detained for weeks Art shippers whom I spoke with for daughter and trust beneficiary Ekater- at a time. Bouvier understood his arrest this article were staggered by what Bou- ina on the warrant. “I had an interior as a kind of shakedown. “The strategy vier had done. The idea of using the in- calm,” she told me. A year earlier, al- was to make a trap,” he said, “and then formation they have soaked up over the most to the day, Elena Rybolovleva had he comes three months later and says, years, their tactile knowledge, to trade been arrested in Cyprus for allegedly Give me fifty or a hundred million and works themselves was anathema. They stealing a diamond ring that Rybolov- I do it, to get out.” Like Rappo, he re- seemed to enjoy their unthought-of role lev said belonged to him. The charges membered what happened to Rybolov- in the art world, and to be happy to stay were dropped, but Rappo had interpreted lev’s ex-wife in Cyprus. there. But they admitted that there was the incident as an act of intimidation Instead, the Russian broadened his very little to stop Bouvier. In an unreg- to hasten the completion of the cou- legal assault. On March 12th, he sued ulated market, the only forces hold- ples’ divorce. (It was settled in October, Bouvier in Singapore, demanding a ing people back are cultural norms and for an undisclosed sum.) “I don’t know worldwide freeze on the dealer’s as- long-term commercial reason: if I am for what reason,” she said. “I just knew not trusted by my peers and customers he was making some sort of blackmail.” to behave in the way they expect me to, Bouvier and Rappo were questioned my business will fail. Bouvier’s calcula- for three days. When Bouvier was con- tion was diferent: in a market powered fronted by the apparent duplicity in his by insider information, the man who e-mails, he replied that they were “just knows everything is king. He opened a commercial game.” But he began to his eyes and saw. comprehend the scale of the accusations Dealers, in general, have been an- against him. Based on the margins that grier, and awestruck. The top end of the they knew about, and a valuation of the private art market is a small place, yet collection, Rybolovlev’s lawyers claimed sets, as well as on Rappo’s. The court Bouvier was almost unknown. When I that their client had been ripped of to granted the injunction, and ordered Bou- showed Daniel Katz, a major London the tune of $1,049,465,009. That Fri- vier to hand over the Rothko. He was dealer, the list of works that Bouvier day, in a form of confrontation that is hit by a similar suit in Hong Kong. A had sold to Rybolovlev and the prices standard under French police procedure, month later, allegations surfaced in Paris he got for them, Katz nearly fell of his Bouvier and Rybolovlev, with their law- that two Picasso portraits that Bouvier chair. “The Russian has been tucked up yers and translators, came face to face. had sold to Rybolovlev in 2013 had to the eyeballs,” he said. Dealers tend to Rybolovlev repeated his assertion that been stolen from their previous owner, have two problems with Bouvier. One, Bouvier had always presented himself as Catherine Hutin-Blay, the artist’s step- he was a shipper, and shippers don’t deal. his agent. He claimed that, when they daughter. Bouvier was hauled to court “I’d consider it a terrible conflict of in- first met, Bouvier had asked him to in- for that as well. Rybolovlev has since terest,” Larry Gagosian told the Times vest a few million euros in his businesses. handed the paintings to the French po- in September. A Swiss dealer told me, “I

70 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 would never, ever show a work at Natu- ral Le Coultre, because I would say, That information is being recorded. How is that going to be used?” More troubling, Bouvier has also tra- duced the idea of what an art dealer should be. He exploited every ambiguity of what is supposed to be a gentlemanly trade. Whether his conduct amounts to fraud will likely turn on the opaque phrasing of e-mails and the doubtful credulity of an oligarch, but the dam- age to the art market lies in Bouvier’s efrontery, the crassness of his gains. One evening in Geneva, I met Marc Blondeau, who used to run Sotheby’s in Paris and helped to build the collection of François Pinault, the luxury-goods magnate. We sat in his oice—an early Renoir on an easel behind me—and he told stories of the paintings he had bought and sold. “When you sell to a “I would have made the gore sickening in a diferent way.” collection,” he said, “it is like you place your child in a nursery.” Blondeau told •• me that great dealers leave their mark: they shape taste, influence markets, sell to museums. Bouvier didn’t do that. He a conflict—first, I never go inside the roots in the chaos of post-Soviet Rus- didn’t have a gallery. He worked mostly safe. And Mr. Gagosian, when he pro- sia, and how he could never have de- on his BlackBerry. “You cannot call him duces an artist, he is an insider like me. ceived a man like that for more than a an art dealer,” Blondeau said. “You call The price goes up. It is bullshit. It is a decade. “If I tricked him,” he said, “I’m him a trader.” market with no rules. Don’t say that it not only the best art dealer in the world, I went to see Bouvier the following is Mr. Bouvier with no rules.” I’m also a genius. I’m Einstein.” day. We met at the oices of Natural We spent all day talking. Bouvier be- When we got back to the oice, Le Coultre. A painting commissioned lieves that the lawsuits are beginning to someone had brought in folio-size for the firm’s hundred-and-fiftieth an- turn his way. Last August, the Court of proofs of Joachim Pissarro’s catalogue niversary, “Transport Through the Ages,” Appeal in Singapore unfroze his assets, of the Rybolovlev collection. The chap- hung above the reception desk. Bouvier including the Rothko. A court in Hong ters were bound in gray boards and tied insists that he never used confidential Kong did the same. The civil suits con- with black ribbons. It is uncertain that information from his logistics business tinue, as does the criminal inquiry in the book will ever be published now, to buy and sell paintings. None of the Monaco, but Bouvier is preparing to and less likely that Rybolovlev’s master- thirty-five works that he sold Rybolovlev seek damages for the injury done to pieces will ever be shown together. Ry- were in storage with Natural Le Coul- his business by Rybolovlev. Rappo has bolovlev told me that he feels “a com- tre. “I have the information not because launched suits of her own in Monaco, al- plicated energy” when he thinks about I am a shipper,” he said. “It is because leging improprieties in the police inves- his paintings. He laughed when I asked I am clever.” tigation. As he spoke, Bouvier kept four him where they were. I asked if he was upset by the rest of Nokias and a BlackBerry within reach The catalogue lay on the table. It was the art market’s disavowal of him since at all times. When one of them rang, he going to be the proof of Bouvier’s capac- his arrest. “All these people think they would turn it over, to see which realm ities as an art dealer: his greatest project, are the best one,” he said. “Now they of his dealings the inquiry was coming realized tirelessly and in the dark, and know the small Bouvier is better than from. He reminded me, in a not entirely suddenly presented to the world. In- them.” With his mastery of hundred- unlikable way, of an animal busy in car- stead, his skill has been revealed at the million-dollar private sales, his knowl- rion, like a jackal. moment of his undoing. I told Bouvier edge of logistics, and his network of We went out for lunch. Bouvier put I had a feeling that he might win his freeports, Bouvier sees himself as a truth- on dark glasses. We ate in a private room legal battle with Rybolovlev but never teller, able to say what others cannot. “I at the Hotel Kempinski, one of the fan- recover his good name. He looked at know everything that is good and ev- ciest hotels in Geneva. Bouvier ordered me. “That will be my next challenge,” erything that is bad in the art business, a Coke Zero and a dish of grilled veni- he said, and he kept staring at me— everything that should change,” he told son called “The Hunting Product.” He his eyes are a mixture of blue and dark me. “When Mr. Gagosian said there was spoke of Rybolovlev’s paranoia, with its green—until I dropped my gaze. 

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 71 REPORT FROM GROZNY PUTIN’S DRAGON Is the ruler of Chechnya out of control?

BY JOSHUA YAFFA

HE CENTER of Grozny, the capi- of Chechnya,” it was built by Turkish tal of the Russian republic of artisans, and opened in 2008. A vast T Chechnya, is unrecognizable to hall lit by Swarovski crystal chande- anyone who saw it during the country’s liers holds ten thousand worshippers, two most recent wars against Russia. The and the mosque is ringed by manicured First Chechen War, which began in 1994, gardens and fountains decorated with was a war of nationalist resistance— colored lights. Chechnya had declared independence One morning in November, I stood from Russia when the Soviet Union dis- in a large square across from the mosque, integrated—and ended two years later, waiting for a concert to begin. A young after a Russian bombing campaign killed Grozny local had given me directions thousands of civilians and left the city tinged with sarcasm: “Let’s meet in front in ruins. The Second Chechen War, of the Kadyrov Mosque, on Kadyrov which the Russians launched in 1999, Square, at the intersection of Kadyrov in an efort to curb not only Chechen Prospect and Putin Prospect.” The con- separatism but the threat of militant cert had been organized by the Kady- Islam, wound down a decade later, with rov administration in honor of National special operations carried out deep in the Unity Day, a Russian public holiday that, craggy, wooded hills of the Caucasus. given the two wars over as many decades, These days, the rubble is gone. The city’s is not without irony for Chechens. skyline is punctuated by the glass tow- The oicials onstage issued wooden ers of Grozny-City, a collection of sky- pronouncements on Russia’s many scrapers that house oices, luxury apart- achievements. The crowd was mostly ments, and a five-star hotel. Grozny is university students and bused-in state quiet and bland, with well-paved boule- employees. Security guards prevented vards running through its center; there anyone from leaving until Kadyrov had is still a faint air of menace—men in spoken. “He wants to see that this big black uniforms stand with automatic crowd of people has gathered for him— rifles on many street corners—but the all voluntarily, of course,” the Grozny city’s flashier attractions, like a man-made local said. But Kadyrov didn’t show— lake with a light show, seem whimsical “If he doesn’t feel like it, he doesn’t and family-friendly. come.” He delegated speechmaking In 2011, Chechnya’s leader, Ramzan duties to Magomed Daudov, a former Kadyrov, who rules the republic as his rebel fighter who switched to Mos- own private fiefdom but remains un- cow’s side in 2004 and is still known questionably loyal to Russia’s President by his nom de guerre, Lord. Daudov, Vladimir Putin, showed of the Grozny- who is now the speaker of Chechnya’s City complex at his extravagant thirty- parliament, said, in a mumbly mono- fifth-birthday party. Hilary Swank and tone, that Putin “demonstrates an ex- Jean-Claude Van Damme appeared on- cellent command of events and has stage—for unspecified fees—to watch the ability to respond appropriately to an acrobatics show and a concert. Asked the challenges of our time.” Kadyrov, the where the money for the celebration “national leader” of the Chechen peo- came from, Kadyrov told reporters, “Allah ple, “understands well that only unity gives it to us.” can provide a basis for the further re- The skyscrapers loom over the Akh- birth and development of the republic.” mad Kadyrov Mosque, named for Kady- Kadyrov is thirty-nine. He has a rov’s father and predecessor, who was as- thicket of reddish-brown hair grow- sassinated in 2004. Known as “the Heart ing into a pointy beard sculpted in the Ramzan Kadyrov, whom Vladimir Putin

72 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 chose to govern Chechnya, has brought the war-weary region into the Russian fold—but at what price to Putin?

PHOTOGRAPH BY ALEXANDER GRONSKY Chechen manner, and a guttural voice lit headed to Grozny with Tom Sauer, a cold and hunger. “Chechens remember with the bass-amped rumble of a heavy young Dutchman, as his Russian trans- everything,” Khassan Bayiev, a widely truck. His squat, muscular frame reflects lator. Sauer told me of driving around respected Chechen surgeon, who now the amount of time that he spends on his Grozny with Kadyrov behind the wheel lives in Boston, told me. “We know who physical-training routine. He is a skill- of a luxury sedan as his bodyguard cra- is who—when Stalin died, the whole ful and popular politician, one of the dled a gold-plated AK-47. Once, after country was weeping, but we were danc- few in modern Russia, where nearly all Gullit told Kadyrov during practice that ing the lezginka.” oicials tend to be charmless function- the club hadn’t paid the players the bo- When Chechnya declared indepen- aries. “Kadyrov’s rule rests on propa- nuses they were owed, Kadyrov sent dence, in 1991, Dzhokhar Dudayev, a ganda, fear—and real popularity,” Greg- some of his men to his car to fetch bags former general in the Soviet Air Force ory Shvedov, the editor of Caucasian filled with rubles. Sauer had dinner with with a trim mustache and a taste for fe- Knot, a news Web site, told me. “He is Kadyrov several times. At one meal, he doras, returned from Estonia and seized like the Chechen Putin.” Over the years, told Sauer that he had himself partic- power. In 1994, Boris Yeltsin instigated Kadyrov has tried out various person- ipated in the mission to kill the rebels the First Chechen War—what the head alities: the merciless warrior in fatigues who planned the attack against his fa- of his security council predicted would who leads special operations to kill anti- ther. “It’s not that people are scared of be a “small victorious war” to retake the government rebels; the jolly Caucasus him,” Sauer said. “I would say: respect- region. During the next two years, more baron who spars with Mike Tyson and fully fearful.” than five thousand Russian soldiers and shows of his private zoo; the family man more than fifty thousand Chechen civil- and observant Muslim who has banned ONG BEFORE the recent wars, Russians ians died. Dudayev himself was killed by alcohol, ordered that women wear head L and Chechens harbored a mutual Russian guided missiles when his satel- scarves in public buildings, and boasts antagonism. In the Russian imagina- lite phone revealed his location. A ne- that his six-year-old son has memo- tion, Chechnya, a thousand miles south gotiated political settlement brought the rized the Koran. of Moscow on the edge of the Cauca- fighting to a close, and the region received Kadyrov has more than one and a half sus mountains, is a place of violence, the trappings of statehood but without million followers on Instagram. This fall, home to a people who are to be feared formal recognition. A period of outright he posted a video of himself in which, and ultimately subjugated, yet awarded banditry ensued. Kidnapping became an kneeling on a sandy beach, he grabs a the respect one gives to a valiant enemy. industry. The nationalists who had led hissing python, talks quietly to it, and Throughout the nineteenth century, the Chechnya during the war lost influence tosses it away. The snake, he wrote in tsar’s army waged a prolonged campaign to violent Islamists. In 1999, Moscow the caption, “symbolizes the forces of evil against guerrilla fighters in the moun- launched a new campaign, overseen by that have taken over huge territories of tains. In “The Cossacks,” Tolstoy, who Vladimir Putin, then the Prime Minis- the globe where hundreds of millions of served as a young military oicer in the ter, who ascended to the Presidency with people sufer.” The next day, he posted Caucasus, depicts the Chechens as fierce tough talk against those he labelled “ter- a photograph of himself discussing the warriors, and has a Chechen fighter tell rorists.” He said, “We’ll waste them in preservation of Chechen traditions with a Russian adversary, “Your men slaugh- the outhouse.” a circle of ministers. “A people who have ter ours, ours butcher yours.” Russian forces captured Grozny and lost their national dances, rhythm, and After the Bolshevik Revolution, So- other main cities, but Russian soldiers music cease to be a nation,” he explained. viet power held the promise of modern- kept dying in high numbers. Even more He can be brutal and severe. In 2009, he ization, and, with time, many Chechens politically dangerous for Putin, Chechen told captured rebel fighters on local televi- joined the Communist system as pro- militants carried out terrorist attacks in sion, “You want to kill people? You kill my fessors, doctors, and state functionar- Moscow and other Russian cities. In comrades, I’ll kill your father, your brother, ies. Yet just as many remained hostile 2002, after Chechen terrorists took more all your pets.” But he can also appear gen- to the Russian state. During the Sec- than seven hundred hostages at a Moscow uine, even sensitive—another rarity in ond World War, countless Chechens theatre, it was obvious that the Kremlin’s Putin-era politics. In November of last fought on the Soviet side against the strategy would have to change. year, Kadyrov seemed sincerely moved Nazi invaders; others seized the mo- The solution was a policy of “Che- by a meeting with a Chechen teen-ager ment to try to overthrow Moscow’s chenization,” under which the Kremlin whose father disappeared during the rule. In 1944, Stalin, using the pretext would cede much of the political and Second War. “You and I share the same of perceived collaboration with the military responsibility to its proxies in sorrow,” he said, alluding to his own fa- Germans, ordered the deportation of Grozny. If there was to be a war, let it be ther’s death. He seized the boy by the the entire population of Chechnya— among Chechens. The Russians settled arm and said, “When you told me how half a million people—to the distant on Kadyrov’s father, Akhmad, to carry out your father had been taken from you, I steppes of Kazakhstan. They remained the policy. A former chief mufti of sep- swear to Allah all I could do was cry.” there until 1957, when Nikita Khru- aratist Chechnya, he had supported the In 2011, Terek Grozny, the local soc- shchev allowed them to begin to return call for jihad against the Russians during cer team, of which Kadyrov is the hon- home. Most Chechens have a grand- the First Chechen War, only to switch orary president, announced that it had father or grandmother brought up in sides and declare allegiance to Moscow hired the Dutch coach Ruud Gullit. Gul- exile; many of the deportees died of in the Second. “He sincerely believed

74 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 that he was saving the Chechen peo- have to answer for this.” (She was mur- ple from certain death,” Ilyas Akhma- dered in the stairwell of her apartment dov, who served as the foreign minister building in Moscow in 2006; multiple of Chechnya’s short-lived separatist gov- trials have produced murky and incon- ernment, told me. The elder Kadyrov clusive results, and those implicated in considered radical Islam, in the form of the killing include three Chechen broth- the Wahhabi practice that was seeping ers and a retired F.S.B. oicer. Kadyrov into the country, as urgent an enemy as has denied any involvement.) In an ar- Russia, and was ready to make a tacti- ticle about the encounter with Kady- cal alliance with Moscow to destroy it. rov, Politkovskaya called the situation in Despite Akhmad Kadyrov’s defection, Chechnya “an old story, repeated many Akhmadov remembers him as “an en- times in our history: the Kremlin fos- ergetic and brave man, with a great deal ters a baby dragon, which it then has to of personal courage.” keep feeding to stop him from setting In 2003, with Chechnya once again everything on fire.” incorporated into the Russian state, the elder Kadyrov was elected President of FTER THE Unity Day celebration, the republic, in a vote held under mil- A I made my way to a café of the itary occupation. Seven months later, square, where I shared a pot of tea with he was dead, killed by a bomb blast at Timur Aliyev, an adviser to Kadyrov. a Grozny stadium as he watched Rus- (Despite multiple attempts, I was un- sian soldiers on parade. Later that day, able to secure a meeting with Kadyrov Ramzan, who was twenty-seven, was himself.) For years, Aliyev was one of summoned to meet with Putin. Until Chechnya’s most respected independent then, Ramzan’s main interests, besides journalists. In 2008, he quit reporting heading his father’s personal militia, and took a job in Kadyrov’s adminis- were boxing and weightlifting. tration. “I once believed in this image In the meeting with Putin, which was of him as a brutal guy,” Aliyev told me. televised nationally, Kadyrov’s blue nylon “But then I got a chance to meet him.” tracksuit set him apart amid the Krem- In their conversations, he found him- lin’s pompous formality. Alexey Chesna- self impressed by Kadyrov, and was kov, who worked in Putin’s administra- struck by his “high ethical qualities” tion at the time, said that a bond seemed and “high religiosity.” Aliyev went on, to form between the two men that night. “He thinks of himself not just as the “Putin thought of Kadyrov the father as head of the Chechen republic but as a a person with whom he reached a par- person who looks after the well-being ticular political agreement—their rela- of each individual.” tions were honest and businesslike but I asked about Kadyrov’s cult of per- ultimately political,” Chesnakov said. sonality. News broadcasts often lead “But he relates to the son with a certain with visits he’s made to local schools warmth.” With Putin’s blessing, Kady- and gyms; in Grozny, I heard plenty of rov claimed the throne that had been stories of citizens appealing to Kadyrov granted to his father. through messages on Instagram, and Just after the assassination, Anna in many cases Kadyrov himself would Politkovskaya, a courageous journalist show up the next day to fix some small who wrote for the small, Moscow-based problem or cajole an incompetent oi- opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta, cial into action. This was all positive, went to interview Ramzan in the fam- Aliyev said. “If we take the personal as- ily’s home village of Tsentoroy, a place pect out of this system, it stops being she described as “one of the unsightli- efective.” As for a day when Kadyrov est of Chechen villages, unfriendly, ugly no longer rules, Aliyev told me, simply, and swarming with murderous-looking “I hope this time never comes.” armed men.” The two had a frosty meet- Since 2001, to keep the peace, the Rus- ing, and it ended with Kadyrov calling sian government has flooded Chechnya Politkovskaya “an enemy of the Chechen with cash, including at least fourteen bil- people” and declaring that she “should lion dollars for postwar reconstruction. Today, more than eighty-five per cent Kadyrov has 1.6 million followers on of Chechnya’s budget comes from Mos- Instagram. cow. Another untold sum comes from an opaque fund named after Kadyrov’s fa- from internal rivals hailing from other ing out the assassination. Dubai police ther, which is financed by business own- prominent Chechen clans. In this, he re- testified in court that Adam Delimkha- ers and public employees—who are infor- sembles Putin, who built what has been nov—Kadyrov’s closest ally, enforcer, and mally required to pay a portion of their called a “vertical of power” across the heir apparent—provided the killers with income to the fund—and by Chechen whole of Russia under his centralized the murder weapon, a gold-plated 9-mm. oligarchs paying tribute to Kadyrov. The authority. Chechnya is far smaller and pistol, and they put him on the Interpol fund, in turn, disburses money for ev- more homogenous, so Kadyrov’s power wanted list. Delimkhanov denied involve- erything from repairing local hospitals is even more pronounced. Putin has ment. He is a deputy in the Russian par- to sending Chechens to Mecca for the eliminated opponents largely through liament, and maintains an unblemished hajj. Chechen oicials have said that do- political trickery and co-optation, re- legal record in Russia—though he once nations to the foundation are voluntary, serving outright force for rare occasions. got into a fistfight with another deputy but a staf member at a public institution Kadyrov prefers blunter, unmistakably inside the parliament building in Mos- in Grozny told me that as soon as the violent means. cow and a gold-plated handgun fell to workers’ salaries are deposited they get For many years, Kadyrov’s chief rivals the floor beside him. A third Yamada- a call from a superior, asking for around were the Yamadayev brothers, who had yev brother, Isa, published an open letter thirty to fifty thousand rubles, or four powerful patrons in Moscow. In 2008, in a Moscow newspaper in 2009, claim- to six hundred dollars. “One time, he Ruslan Yamadayev, a member of the Rus- ing that Kadyrov had tried to kill him, explained it was for organizing a big sian parliament, was shot and killed in his but he reached an apparent truce with soccer match,” the person said. “Other car, outside the Russian White House, the Kadyrov the next year. The end of the Ya- times, he doesn’t give any explanation at chief oice of government administration madayev brothers as a political force left all.” The fund, an indulgence granted to in Moscow; in 2009, his younger brother Kadyrov with nearly unchecked power. no other Russian governor, frees Kady- Sulim was killed in the parking garage of “These were strong guys with connec- rov from complete financial dependence a luxury apartment tower in Dubai, where tions to the F.S.B.,” the successor agency on the Kremlin. he was living under an assumed name. to the K.G.B., Alexey Malashenko, an Since succeeding his father, Kady- A Dubai court tried and convicted two expert on the Caucasus at the Carnegie rov has wrested power not just from the men, including an Iranian who worked Moscow Center, told me. “But it turns Russian generals and intelligence oicers as a stable hand for Kadyrov—Kadyrov out that even the F.S.B. couldn’t defend who once oversaw Chechnya but also keeps racehorses in Dubai—for carry- them, because Kadyrov isn’t protected by the F.S.B., or by the state writ large, but by Putin himself.” Over the years, various enemies of Kadyrov’s have turned up dead. In 2009, Umar Israilov, a onetime Kadyrov body- guard who had been given asylum in Austria, was shot dead on a street in Vi- enna. In Chechnya, he had been cap- tured as a rebel fighter, and ended up in a torture chamber efectively under Kadyrov’s control. As the Times reported, Israilov said that Kadyrov “amused him- self by personally giving prisoners elec- tric shocks or firing pistols at their feet.” As Israilov told it, he was saved by agree- ing to join Kadyrov’s security forces, but his father urged him to desert, and he fled to Western Europe. After a year- long investigation, Austrian oicials al- leged that Kadyrov had ordered Israilov to be abducted; he was shot when the operation went awry, they said. Kadyrov denied any role in the killing. In London, I spoke with Akhmed Zakayev, once the prime minister of Chechnya’s separatist government. For several years beginning in 2008, Kadyrov sent emissaries to try to convince Zaka- yev that he should come home. Zakayev rebufed the ofer. “You are traitors,” “Next session, I get the Eames and you get the Stickley.” he instructed an intermediary to tell Kadyrov. He heard later that Kadyrov aid N.G.O., told me that Putin and the Chechen special-forces unit under Kady- had shouted, “My main goal in life is security oicials around him operate rov’s informal authority, told me that he to kill Zakayev!” under the assumption that success in once recognized another retired member In 2012, Britain’s security forces de- the war against Islamic terrorism in the of the unit in a YouTube clip filmed in tained a Chechen man based on MI5’s Caucasus—one of the signal achieve- Donetsk, the capital of rebel-held east- suspicion that he had flown to London ments of Putin’s Presidency, and a pil- ern Ukraine. Onscreen, a Chechen gun- to assassinate Zakayev, on orders from lar of his popular legitimacy—couldn’t man tells the camera that he has come to Kadyrov. (Kadyrov’s spokesman denied have been accomplished by strictly fol- “defend the interests of the Russian Fed- the allegations.) Zakayev now lives under lowing the law. “They think eration.” The former oicer British state protection. We met for tea that to keep the peace with told me that when he saw in London. He told me, “Certain peo- legal methods is impossi- the video he exclaimed, “Oh, ple know where I am, where we are sit- ble. So that’s why you have he’s one of ours!” ting, with whom I’m talking, how I ar- kadyrovtsy”—the militiamen More recently, Kadyrov rived here, and how I will depart.” He loyal to Kadyrov—“who ter- has ofered his fighters to said that over many centuries Chechen rorize the population, who Putin for use in Syria, where tradition has favored a consensus among kidnap and, yes, torture peo- Russia is bombing rebels but families, with no one clan holding ab- ple. But it’s not possible to has not launched a full-scale solute power. “A feudal system has been do it any other way.” ground operation. He pro- forced on us, in which a new caste has After a rare terrorist at- posed sending Chechen spe- appeared in Chechen society,” he said of tack in downtown Grozny, in Decem- cial forces, saying in a radio interview, Kadyrov and his inner circle—one that is ber, 2014, which left more than a dozen “If our request is granted, it will be a above all other clans, and above the law. oicers in Chechnya’s security forces celebration for us.” Another member “I’m the boss,” Kadyrov told a tele- dead, Kadyrov responded with a puni- of Sever, still active in the unit, told me vised meeting of Chechen oicials in tive campaign against the relatives of sus- that when the Afghan warlord Rashid 2011. “And no one else but me, under- pected militants. “If a rebel kills a police- Dostum visited Chechnya, last Octo- stand? Ramzan—and that’s it. No other man or another person, his family will ber, Kadyrov ordered members of the names in this region. There is only one be immediately expelled from Chechnya republic’s armed units to attend an im- name—Kadyrov.” with no right to return, and his house promptu rally. With Dostum at his side, will be razed to the ground,” he told his Kadyrov wanted to know who was will- USSIAN FEDERAL troops are practically security oicials. The homes of several ing, if asked, to fight in Syria. Every sol- R invisible in Chechnya, confined to families were burned down in the mid- dier stepped forward. “We are waiting a single base east of Grozny. The uni- dle of the night. for the call,” the Sever oicer told me. “If formed men with automatic rifles in the Such collective punishment is ille- Putin says to Ramzan, ‘Get your army capital and in smaller towns are Chechen gal in Russia, and, as the house burn- together,’ we are ready.” forces, not Russian, and their loyalties ings gained media attention, Putin was In December, 2014, Kadyrov sum- lie with Kadyrov, not with Moscow. Be- forced to respond. At his annual year- moned thousands of armed men from tween twenty and thirty thousand men end press conference, he said, “Everyone Chechnya’s various security forces to- are estimated to serve in units under must obey Russian law.” Even if families gether in Grozny’s soccer stadium. He Kadyrov’s unoicial control. As Kadyrov knew that relatives were involved in ter- delivered a rousing speech. “We say to has accrued power, Moscow has come to rorism, he said, “that does not give the the entire world that we are combat in- matter less and less in Chechnya. “Fed- right to anyone to vigilante justice, in- fantry of Vladimir Putin,” he said. Rus- eral law does not work at all,” Svetlana cluding the head of Chechnya.” Never- sia may have its regular military, but Gannushkina, a human-rights activist theless, more homes were destroyed in “there are tasks that can be solved only who often works on cases in Chechnya, the following days. Chechen families by volunteers, and we’ll solve them.” The told me. “But, at the same time, there consist of dozens or hundreds of people rally both proved Kadyrov’s unique loy- is no homegrown Chechen system of in an extended clan, so it’s never dii- alty and reminded Putin of Kadyrov’s law. So what is there, then? One thing, cult to find someone to pressure or in- strength: if the Kremlin were to recon- just one law, which can be formulated timidate. “The misfortune of one person sider its bargain with Kadyrov, tens of in two words: Ramzan’s order.” becomes the misfortune of a whole fam- thousands of armed men might have Kadyrov’s militias have enabled ily,” a human-rights activist explained. something to say about it. him to crush Chechnya’s Islamic in- Kadyrov’s forces represent a conve- surgency, which is likely his most im- nient instrument for the Kremlin: obe- ADYROV HAS fashioned Chechnya in portant achievement in Putin’s eyes. dient, battle-hardened troops who can be K his own image. The republic is now Last year, just fourteen people were counted on for messy missions. Fight- governed by diktats inspired by Sharia killed in violence related to the linger- ers identifying themselves as kadyrovtsy jurisprudence and Kadyrov’s personal ing insurgency, compared with eighty- popped up in eastern Ukraine through- interpretation of adat, a traditional Che- two in 2012 and ninety-five in 2011. out 2014, where they took part in deci- chen code of behavior. In 2010, after vig- Igor Kalyapin, the head of the Com- sive battles in support of pro-Russian reb- ilantes drove around Grozny firing paint- mittee Against Torture, a Russian legal- els. A former oicer of Sever (“North”), a balls at uncovered women, Kadyrov said

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 77 that he wanted to “give an award” to the tirely illiberal, and far from purely faith- men. He has displayed a contradictory ful to Islamic or even Chechen tradition, attitude toward honor killings, condemn- but, given the sense of trauma and dis- ing the practice while placing it within location after twenty years of conflict, it Chechen tradition. “Here, if a woman has many elements that are welcomed does not behave properly, her husband, by the population. Hardly a day passes father, and brother are responsible,” he in Grozny without a dance performance said in a 2008 interview. “According to by a local troupe or an athletic competi- our tradition, if a woman fools around, her tion featuring Chechen sportsmen. One family members kill her. . . . As a Presi- night, I spoke to a woman who is a re- dent, I cannot allow for them to kill. So maining representative of Grozny’s in- let women not wear shorts.” Last Novem- telligentsia, a once thriving social class ber, the Kadyrov administration issued that was largely lost when the city was an order requiring all Chechen police destroyed. “We were in a diicult posi- oicers to read three hundred thousand tion after two wars, spiritually and mor- prayers to the Prophet Muhammad in ally dead,” she told me. “And, while we the course of the month. should keep in mind all the negative parts Early one morning in Grozny, I sat of his character, in terms of the spiritual in an oice of the cavernous main hall aspect Kadyrov has put an end to our de- of the Kadyrov Mosque with Usman cline.” She went on, though, to say that Osmaev, the republic’s deputy mufti, the state could do only so much, and that who is thirty-eight. He praised Kady- it would be up to Chechens themselves to rov and his amalgam of religion and rebuild their culture—a tall order, given government. “He needs correct Islam; the state’s degree of intrusion into every- we need a correct state,” Osmaev said. day lives. “Ramzan on his own isn’t cul- “What he has achieved is that we have ture; it’s just a forced choice, to require returned to our roots: in religion, adat, this, ban that, build something here, and culture.” When it came to how such then declare this culture,” she said. Some prescriptions were enforced, Osmaev traditions were returning, others were told me, in the span of one sentence, being lost—often both at the same time. that “nothing is forced,” but, even so, “When I was a young girl, my grand- in matters like dress and behavior “the father made me wear a head scarf,” she only requirement is that people follow said. “I was afraid of him. He explained the mentality of the Chechen people.” to me, ‘You are a Chechen girl, and so One of the more sensitive subjects you will wear a head scarf.’ But today we is polygamy, given that it is unequiv- don’t have such grandfathers, and instead ocally prohibited by Russian law, but their role is played by the Department of Kadyrov and other Chechen oicials Spiritual and Moral Education.” have repeatedly come out in favor of Magomed Khambiev was once the the practice. In 2011, Kadyrov told a minister of defense in the separatist gov- Russian newspaper reporter that he was ernment, in charge of Chechnya’s rebel looking for a second bride, but couldn’t forces. He is fifty-three, with a taut, find a woman beautiful enough. “If you weathered face and wisps of silver hair. have love, then you can take up to four During the Second Chechen War, he wives,” he explained, citing Sharia law. stayed loyal to the separatist cause long Last May, a fifty-seven-year-old dis- after Kadyrov’s father switched sides. But trict police chief took a Chechen teen- his commitment to fighting Moscow— ager—she was said to be seventeen—as which, by the early aughts, meant battling his second wife. The ceremony became Kadyrov’s forces, too—caused problems a short-lived sensation in Russian poli- for his family. In 2002, an older brother tics, and Kadyrov weighed in, calling it was kidnapped and never seen again. “the marriage of the millennium.” Other relatives were frequently hauled When I asked Osmaev about polyg- of for questioning and pressured into re- amy, he replied, “O.K., so there is only vealing his whereabouts. In 2004, accord- one oicial stamp in your passport—but, ing to human-rights activists, Chechen in actual fact, please get married a sec- security forces arrested at least forty of ond, third, fourth time. A man has a right Khambiev’s relatives—including women to live with as many girls as he wants.” and old people—and held them hostage.

Kadyrov’s government may be en- “I could see the end was near,” he said. INSTAGRAM “Should I become an enemy to my own down with Kadyrov, he tried to raise about the consequences—think about family? Every step I took was a further some of the issues that Memorial was yourself, about your daughter.” risk to them.” He joined Kadyrov. At working on in Chechnya—forced dis- In July, 2009, Estemirova travelled to first, he thought of his decision as a de- appearances, torture, extrajudicial exe- the village of Akhkinchu-Borzoi. She feat and a sign of great weakness. cutions—while avoiding outright con- spoke with locals about a killing in which But Khambiev came to believe in the frontation. That proved diicult. Kadyrov armed men had dragged a man suspected state that Kadyrov was building. “Ramzan presented himself as Chechnya’s “chief of being involved in the militant under- said to me, ‘Think about it—I am giving human-rights defender”; he didn’t seem ground to the center of the village and you the chance to live in peace.’ ” Kham- to understand the purpose of indepen- shot him dead. She published her find- biev decided that Kadyrov was right, that dent bodies like Memorial. “If there is ings in a press release for Memorial. Orlov the smarter path lay in reaching accom- an issue, tell me—I can solve anything,” told me that an oicial close to Kady- modation with Moscow, rather than re- he said to Orlov. “He wanted to give rov summoned the head of the Grozny maining its perpetual enemy. “We couldn’t the impression of a person who gets joy oice, Estemirova’s boss. “Do you un- win independence by force—to continue from helping Chechnya, who truly thinks derstand what you are printing—do you down that road would be to destroy the about Chechnya, and who lives a dii- remember what happened with Anna Chechen people. But, here and now, I live cult life,” Orlov said. Stepanovna?” the oicial said, referring how I want, in my own state, with my The conversation, Orlov recalled, con- to Politkovskaya. He went on, “Keep in own President.” Khambiev now heads a tinued like this for some time, until, in mind the exact same thing could hap- committee on law enforcement and se- the middle of the night, Kadyrov “began pen with Natasha Estemirova.” Memo- curity in Chechnya’s parliament, a body to talk about emotional things, what a rial told her to leave the republic. The day wholly subservient to Kadyrov. With blow the death of his father was, how im- before her flight, she was kidnapped out- obvious pride, he explained to me that portant his father was to him.” According side her apartment. Her body was found Kadyrov has willed into being a Chechen to Gannushkina, a former mathematics later that day in a field of a highway. state that surpasses what he and other professor who is now in her seventies, as Orlov declared at a press conference rebel commanders once fought so hard the meeting dragged on Kadyrov seemed the next day that Kadyrov bore respon- to achieve. “The Russian generals wanted more and more like “a lonely person— sibility for the murder. Kadyrov phoned to be bosses here, for me to stay on my not the Ramzan of today but Ramzan him and vehemently denied it, and sub- knees and beg and sob before them,” he as a child.” At a certain point, she said, sequently filed a criminal complaint for said. “Well, it turns out they lost and I Kadyrov promised to build a house for slander. In a Moscow court, he testified won. We Chechens have become rich, her in Chechnya and love her as his own that Orlov’s claims were a “big black and proud, and independent from them.” mother. She added, “He also told me mark for the Kadyrov family— I have some personal, intimate things that I four daughters and three sons, and they N FEBRUARY, 2008, Oleg Orlov, the don’t think it would be right to repeat.” should all get married.” In 2011, the judge I board chairman of a Moscow-based The next day, Kadyrov met with found Orlov not guilty. (Kadyrov had won human-rights organization called Me- Orlov and Gannushkina again. This an earlier civil case against Orlov, and morial, received an invitation from peo- meeting was broadcast on Chechen tele- was awarded $2,410 in damages.) Orlov ple close to Kadyrov to speak with him vision. Kadyrov proposed the creation of told me recently that he doesn’t necessar- about Memorial’s activities in Chechnya. a municipal human-rights council for ily believe Kadyrov issued a clear order; He went, thinking that it would be a Grozny and named as its head Nata- it’s possible that his language was indi- chance to explain the group’s work to lia Estemirova, a respected and coura- rect—“Solve the problem,” say. But, given Kadyrov and perhaps gain a measure of geous activist who worked in Memori- the prevailing situation in Chechnya, he protection for staf members in the or- al’s Grozny oice. “Just like that, like a said, Kadyrov’s subordinates would inter- ganization’s Grozny oice. Several col- tsar and a god, he decided and made it pret such language as instructions to act. leagues, including Svetlana Gannushkina, happen,” Orlov said. As Orlov came to The Grozny oice of Memorial re- the human-rights activist, accompanied understand, Kadyrov thought that the mains open, but few victims of abuse him. In Grozny, they waited for hours, move would bring Estemirova’s activi- come to ask for help, and those who do until, just before midnight, two cars came ties under his control. file claims withdraw them once their fam- to pick them up and deliver them to one The arrangement didn’t last long. Es- ilies come under pressure. “People tell us, of Kadyrov’s residences. Sirens blaring, temirova continued to investigate abuses quite frankly, ‘You can’t even defend your they drove along an empty road that had carried out by Chechen security forces. own people,’ ” Orlov said. “What can we been cleared of traic and passed through A month later, she gave an interview to say, really? They are right.” a wrought-iron gate flanked by a pair of federal television in which she criticized bronze lions. “It was like some kind of Kadyrov’s policy of requiring women to AST YEAR, on February 27th, Boris Babylon,” Orlov said. wear head scarves in public buildings. She L Nemtsov—a former deputy prime They walked into an enormous foyer, was called in to see Grozny’s mayor, and minister, who had become one of Putin’s bare except for a billiard table and a dis- then Kadyrov showed up and announced best-known opponents—was walking on play case with a collection of rare weap- that he was dissolving the Grozny hu- a bridge near the Kremlin when an as- ons: antique sabres, ornate pistols, an en- man-rights council. As Estemirova later sassin approached from behind and shot graved machine gun. When Orlov sat told Orlov, Kadyrov warned her, “Think him. Some days later, Putin told a meeting

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 79 of high-ranking law-enforcement oi- cials that “the brazen murder of Boris Nemtsov right in the center of the cap- MESSENGER STAR ital” was a “shame and tragedy” that the country must not tolerate. The tree is dead, in my neighbor’s yard, Putin’s moral outrage may have been the branches empty of leaves and the owl’s nest a cynical performance, but his anger naked and derelict it seems. We sat with appeared genuine. “He was obviously stunned,” Gleb Pavlovsky, a former polit- our winter picnic and watched for the pair ical adviser to Putin who left the Krem- who haunted our block. The male much smaller lin in 2011 and became a critic of it, told and loud, calling his dominion just after dark. me. “As a political assassination, this is direct interference in the politics of the The female usually close by. They seemed like federal center, and, what’s more, right glamorous friends, distant but always there. under Putin’s nose.” He went on, “If you I’d seen one only once during the day. can do something like this just outside Spassky gate”—a Kremlin landmark, I stood at the curb, talking to the handyman, when whose spire overlooks the bridge where the female owl came low out the alleyway flying Nemtsov was killed—“then maybe you soundless, so close I could see her eye could do this inside Spassky gate as well.” The arrests came relatively fast: in in her pale face, the beak curved and clear, the first week of March, the F.S.B. de- but her eye, a killer’s, make no mistake, told me tained five suspects. All were ethnic if by any chance of size or opportunity she would. Chechens; two were arrested in Mos- cow, and three in Ingushetia, a small I will not think this was some kind of portent, republic bordering Chechnya. Security that she was a harbinger of all that followed. forces said that as they moved in to ar- The handyman, always I paid him more rest another suspect in Grozny he blew himself up with a grenade. and more, too shy was he to ask his worth, whispered, Attention quickly focussed on the what’s wrong, bird? I see how this owl could be alleged triggerman: a decorated thirty- seen as a sign. In fact, I was shaking afterward. three-year-old Chechen oicer named Zaur Dadaev, a former deputy com- My vegetables would bolt that spring, a dear friend mander of Sever. The timing of Dada- showed how empty she saw my love, and another ev’s departure from Sever was curious: died from drinking beyond what his body wanted his resignation letter was dated Decem- ber, 2014, but it was processed on Febru- ary 28th, the day after Nemtsov’s mur- uinely devoted to Russia, ready to give On December 30th, Russian inves- der. At first, investigators implied that up his life for his motherland.” tigators named the alleged organizer Dadaev and his suspected accomplices Putin’s mood was hard to read. of the crime: Ruslan Mukhudinov, a were enraged by Nemtsov’s support for Orkhan Djemal, a journalist with ex- low-ranking oicer in the Sever unit. the French cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo, tensive sources inside Chechnya, told me No one knew where he was, and the in- but that theory fell apart after it came he had heard that for days Putin wouldn’t dictment was issued in absentia. Yet, all to light that his killers had begun trail- take Kadyrov’s calls, which caused Kady- along, the Russian press, citing law-en- ing him in the fall of 2014, months be- rov to panic. Kadyrov apparently man- forcement sources, had pointed not so fore the attack in Paris. “Dadaev doesn’t aged to smooth relations with Putin, but much to Mukhudinov as to his senior really have his own motives; he’s not a the fact that people even tangentially re- oicer, Ruslan Geremeyev, for whom bird of very high altitude, as we say,” lated to Chechnya’s political élite had Mukhudinov worked as a driver. Other Vadim Prokhorov, Nemtsov’s lawyer, told been arrested on murder charges marked suspects detained with Dadaev told in- me. “It’s clear that he takes orders from an unprecedented moment in Putin-era vestigators that Geremeyev had spent someone else.” politics. “The arrests may seem modest, time during the weeks before the killing Nemtsov’s supporters, including his but it’s actually a revolution—they are a at the Moscow apartment where the hit family, immediately pointed to Kady- genuine achievement for investigators, team was staying. Dadaev and Gereme- rov and his inner circle. Two days after and a blow to Kadyrov,” Elena Mila- yev were close after many years in Sever, Dadaev’s arrest, Kadyrov took to Insta- shina, who covers Chechnya for No- and the day following the murder they gram in Dadaev’s defense. “I knew Zaur vaya Gazeta, said. Since Politkovskaya’s drove to the Moscow airport together as a genuine patriot of Russia,” he wrote. death, Milashina has become one of the and flew back to Chechnya, according Dadaev was one of the “most fearless and most deeply committed reporters cover- to airport surveillance photos. brave warriors in his regiment . . . gen- ing the region. Geremeyev has deep connections to

80 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 it was dangerous. You didn’t know who was shooting at whom.” Zaur Dadaev proved himself as a fighter, and in 2010 was awarded a medal and then he drank again. Higginson said of Poe’s for leading an assault against a group face, it had the look of oversensitiveness which when of militants. He rose to become Sever’s uncontrolled may prove more debasing than coarseness. deputy commander, and was known as a strong leader, a former Sever fighter told That bird was roused terribly from sleep, no doubt, me: “If he found himself in a group of as big as a stump and flying. A bat in daytime has ten guys, the other nine would wait for a diferent eye, naked and frightened, I once found him to do something.” Another Sever member, still active in the unit, told me five under a wall clock on the porch and they were blinking that few on the unit’s base now talk of and slow to scatter. Their guano had choked the battery. Dadaev. “Everyone has forgotten about Poe recited poems drunk, revenge?—he’d say him; it’s as if he never existed.” In Chechnya, I heard several versions that he had written them when he was ten and maybe of why Dadaev left Sever for Moscow: this was fear, because some of us only grow more he wanted to get a law degree or open a vulnerable; there is less ease as we near the end. café, or maybe find work as a driver or security guard. No one heard much from A singular music wrote Higginson of Poe’s voice him until, in early March, a few days when he recited “The Raven.” What’s wrong, bird? after Nemtsov was killed, he returned We spread out blankets on the dry grass and our laps, to Grozny. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. “He was in a great mood— and ate our food, pulled from a faded blue train case he was the same Zaur as always, same I found years ago, with a diamond-shaped mirror. laugh,” one of his Sever colleagues told The game and the feeling was that we were on me. He hadn’t even changed his cell- phone number. No one who knew Da- a journey. The child saw her first, at the top of the neighbor’s daev thought that he could be involved dead tree, one that would fall on our roof and end in gunning down Nemtsov. “We have a in legal action. We could not see her mate; she was alone, rule: if a person is walking away, you don’t shoot them,” an oicer from Sever told so sharply drawn by streetlight we could see her horns. me. “To kill someone like that would be a great disgrace. Zaur is a smart guy, not —Connie Voisine dumb, and you’d have to be an idiot to go for something like this.” Shakhrudi, in his living room, the Chechen political élite: he is related One night toward the end of my time showed me two letters he had received to both Delimkhanov, Kadyrov’s closest in Grozny, I paid a visit to Shakhrudi from his brother in jail. “Everything ally, and another high-ranking Kady- Dadaev, Zaur Dadaev’s older brother. is fine, by the will of the Almighty,” rov associate who represents Chechnya Shakhrudi, who is sixty and raises sheep, Zaur wrote in June. “I didn’t do any- in the upper house of Russia’s parlia- lives in a large, immaculately clean house thing against the law. Everything I said ment. Over the past year, investigators that would be the pride of any Chechen after I was arrested I said under pres- have twice tried to issue an indictment extended family. He set out a tray of fruit sure. It was dictated to me—the pres- against Geremeyev, only to be rebufed and candies, made a pot of strong black sure was serious, not a joke.” The next by their boss, the powerful head of the tea, and had me sit in a far corner fac- month, he wrote again, “Don’t worry, country’s Investigative Committee—he ing the door, the seat of honor for guests brother, my conscience is clean, not refused to sign the warrant, according to in a Chechen home. Zaur is the young- only before you and our relatives but be- a report published last month by RBK, a est of four brothers, Shakhrudi told me. fore all of Chechnya.” Shakhrudi grew Russian daily. More than that, investiga- Their parents returned to Chechnya in more animated as we spoke. Chechen tors can’t even talk to Geremeyev: leaks the nineteen-fifties, when Khrushchev tradition would never allow such a thing, from the security services imply that he cancelled Stalin’s deportation order. After he said; he was the elder in the family, fled to the United Arab Emirates, then serving for several years with Russian fed- and Zaur hadn’t consulted him—he quietly returned to Chechnya, where re- eral forces, Zaur joined Kadyrov’s per- never would have got himself mixed up quests summoning him for questioning sonal guard, and in 2006 he enlisted in in such a plot without checking with have got nowhere. Clearly, Putin could Sever. “That was a time when not ev- him first. “I don’t believe that he did have Geremeyev arrested if he wished; the eryone wanted to join,” Shakhrudi said. this,” Shakhrudi told me. “For me and fact that he hasn’t suggests that stability “Now that Kadyrov is President, there our whole family, it is a shame even that in Chechnya is more important to him. is some order and quiet, but back then there are rumors that my brother could

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 81 have shot an unarmed man in the street.” trade in conspiracy theories. The mur- ably serves as both a testing ground and In the months since the murder, der, it is said, could be anything from a a harbinger of what Russia is becoming. Kadyrov has said little about Nemtsov plot by the security services to discredit “Chechnya is Russia’s avant-garde,” Var- or the detained suspects. When I asked Kadyrov to an attempt by Kadyrov to vara Pakhomenko, an analyst who cov- a high-ranking oicial in the Chechen compel Putin to rely on force alone in ers the North Caucasus for the Interna- security forces about the case, he waved propping up his rule. tional Crisis Group, told me. “What we of any suggestion that there was cause A trial will begin sometime this spring, see in Chechnya now we may soon see for worry. “If a particular person com- but in a case like this a courtroom is an in the whole of Russia.” She mentioned mits a crime, it doesn’t matter who this unlikely place for new facts to emerge. the decay of the rule of law and an in- person was in the past or what kind of “I have the sense that the highest au- creased use of torture, to say nothing of medals he received—he should be ar- thorities in Moscow know full well who a shrinking space for civil-society groups rested, tried, and punished,” he said. carried out this murder and where these and anyone who takes public action out- In Russia, how you see the plot is de- people are—they are getting the full pic- side the state’s increasingly paranoid con- termined largely by how you think Putin’s ture from investigators,” Olga Shorina, trol. “You can’t allow one enclave to exist state works. The fact that Dadaev carried a longtime employee and confidante of outside the law,” Pakhomenko said. “If himself with apparent nonchalance after Nemtsov’s, told me. Yet she doesn’t ex- you let one arm rot, the infection spreads his return to Chechnya from Moscow, pect to learn much herself. “The regime to the whole body.” for example, showed either that he had wants all conflicts between its component In January, Kadyrov attacked Russia’s nothing to hide and had been set up or parts to be resolved in private.” liberal opposition, saying that its leaders that he operated with impunity, certain were traitors, who “should be treated as that those who ordered the crime would FTER MORE than a decade of Kady- enemies of the people”—a Stalin-era lo- cover for him. Many other mysteries A rov’s rule, Chechnya has become cution—and “tried to the fullest extent loom. Were Kadyrov and his clique in- Russia in miniature, a concentrated for their subversive activities.” A scan- volved and, if so, did they act without Pu- tincture of all its habits and instincts dal erupted in Moscow political cir- tin’s permission, thinking that they would and pathologies, with Kadyrov wor- cles, and Putin’s human-rights ombuds- please the President? Or had Putin or- shipping Putin and consistently enact - woman—whose position is a thankless, dered the hit? Investigators are conspicu- ing the darker urges and impulses of the largely impotent one, but with a relatively ously avoiding these questions. The lack system that Putin has created. high profile—said that Kadyrov’s “state- of information has led to a flourishing At the same time, Chechnya argu- ments are not only pointless but also harmful, because they render a disservice to the President and cast a shadow on the country.” Even the speaker of Rus- sia’s parliament, a thoroughly obedient body, suggested that Kadyrov had spo- ken in error. Some days later, Kadyrov responded with an editorial in Izvestia, a pro-Kremlin daily, in which he called the country’s opposition “jackals, who are dreaming of destroying our state,” and, in another grim echo of the Soviet past, suggested that they be sent to a psychi- atric hospital in Chechnya. Many in the beleaguered opposi- tion thought that Kadyrov was trying to deflect attention from the Nemtsov investigation; others believed that, in a time of shrinking budgets for Russia’s regions, he was trying to simultaneously impress and frighten the Kremlin, in order to make sure that federal money keeps flowing to Grozny. Whatever the explanation, Kadyrov had become a po- litical figure of national significance. If Putin isn’t always pleased by his more strident expressions of aggression and intolerance, he surely finds something “Thank you for submitting the enclosed formula, which useful in his role as the bogeyman of proves and solves the unified field theory. Unfortunately, it does Russia’s political system, and, in any case, not suit our needs at the present time.” he lacks the ability to control Kadyrov’s every move. Alexei Venediktov, the ed- itor-in-chief of Echo of Moscow, an independent radio station, thinks that for Putin Kadyrov is a way to show that, “anytime he wants, like Freddy Krueger, he can put on a clawed glove, a glove covered in spikes, and use it as a weapon.” Last month, Venediktov was among those singled out for criticism by Kadyrov and his deputies; the station increased his personal security detail. On January 22nd, the administration in Grozny put together a large demon- stration in the center of the city in sup- port of Kadyrov; his allies railed against Venediktov and Gannushkina and oth- ers from the stage. Venediktov told me, “Just like anyone with unlimited power, who faces no borders at all, he tries to ex- pand his influence as much as possible.” As the Nemtsov case had already made clear, Kadyrov has no shortage of en- •• emies, whether among the liberal op- position or F.S.B. generals, but he has The more paranoid in Moscow’s op- stood watching, dressed in fatigues and managed to play on his image as Pu- position circles see Kadyrov as a poten- wraparound sunglasses, with a machine tin’s dragon, wielding as much power tial successor to Putin. That’s highly un- gun held tight against his chest. As is over his master as vice versa. Even if re- likely—preposterous, even—but Kadyrov usual these days, Kadyrov was wearing lations between Putin and Kadyrov in- has made himself an irreplaceable part an olive-green overshirt, a form of tradi- deed reach a state of crisis, Pakhomenko of the political system. Nikolay Petrov, tional Chechen dress that he has made said, ultimately “the Kremlin believes that the head of the Center for Political Geo- popular among his retinue and has re- the current situation is better than what graphic Research, said that, whatever turn quired male public employees to wear could happen if it changes anything.” In- the Russian political system takes in the to the oice on Fridays. His beard had deed, Putin seems little inclined to risk future, Kadyrov will have to be accounted grown long. altering his relations with Kadyrov, or for, and could perhaps play a decisive role. Inside the hall, a troupe of Chechen even to scold him openly. In late Jan- “Kadyrov has the potential to be a tsar- women in flowing red dresses performed uary, Putin made his first comments in maker,” Petrov said. “Not because he has a traditional dance that was lyrical, al- the wake of Kadyrov’s public clash with more men at his disposal than, for exam- most mournful. A speaker announced the country’s liberals, saying that Kady- ple, the minister of defense, but because a charity project initiated by Kadyrov’s rov “works efectively” and that he and his men—tens of thousands of them— mother and sponsored by the Kadyrov his father deserve “thanks” for what the will carry out his orders without think- fund: the families of oicers killed in region has become today. ing twice. If the minister of defense tells the fight against militants would receive If Putin were to admit that Kady- his troops to storm the Kremlin, he can’t a payment of fifty thousand rubles. The rov has become too dangerous or too be sure that all of them will actually do interior minister then presented a new costly, he would be conceding the failure it. But Kadyrov can.” award, “For distinction in the struggle of his own policy. He rose to the Pres- against terrorism and extremism,” and idency on the basis of having pacified N MY last day in Grozny, the city was announced that its first recipient would Chechnya and neutralized the threat O celebrating another public holiday, be Kadyrov. Kadyrov took the stage and of terrorism, and now he can’t aban- this one honoring the police and the delivered a speech in memory, as he ex- don Kadyrov any more easily than he Interior Ministry. Hundreds gathered plained, of those Chechen troops who could abandon the narrative of his own at the city’s main concert hall for a cer- had been killed or injured while on duty. rule. But that may be beside the point, emony led by Kadyrov. Just before two “We remember what has come before,” Gleb Pavlovsky, the former Putin ad- in the afternoon, he arrived in a black he said, alluding to the destruction of the viser, said. “The Kremlin isn’t interested Mercedes S.U.V.—he was driving him- two wars. “We couldn’t walk around the in laws—it itself doesn’t follow them. self—and parked it in the square outside city, we couldn’t say openly that we were It’s interested in reality, and from its the hall. He jumped out and was saluted Chechens. Thanks to Akhmad-Haji point of view reality means the use of by Chechnya’s interior minister and his Kadyrov and Vladimir Putin, all that force and the transfer of money.” On deputies, along with a group of young has changed.” Afterward, he got back this score, Kadyrov hasn’t done any- Chechen cadets. His chief bodyguard, in the driver’s seat, and his motorcade thing to abrogate his end of the bargain. a Chechen fighter nicknamed Patriot, followed him down Putin Prospect. 

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 83 FICTION DESIGN BY ELANA SCHLENKER DESIGN BY

84 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 PHOTOGRAPH BY JEFF BARK HE TREES along Pine Street that “We are,” she said. turned out badly. Worked dumb jobs every spring bloomed purple At the grave she’d say, Paul, dear, ev- and had never married and were always T flowers had bloomed purple erything came out all right. Paulie flew talking about their feelings. flowers. So what? What was the big in and Pammy held my hand, and for Something had spoiled Paulie and deal? It happened every spring. Pammy once they laid of the smoking crap. Pammy. Well, it wasn’t her. She’d al- kept saying, “Look at the flowers, Ma. They were passing the Manfrey place. ways been firm. Once, she’d left them Ain’t them flowers amazing?” The kids Once, in the Nixon years, lightning had at the zoo for disobeying. When she’d were trying to kiss up. Paulie had flown hit the Manfrey cupola. In the morn- told them to stop feeding the girafe in, and Pammy had taken her to Moth- ing a portion of cupola lay on the lawn. they’d continued. She’d left them at the er’s Day lunch and now was holding She’d walked by with Nipper. Paul, Sr., zoo and gone for a cocktail, and when her hand. Holding her hand! Right on did not walk Nipper. Walking Nipper she returned Pammy and Paulie were Pine. The girl who once slapped her being too early. Paul, Sr., had been a standing repentant at the front gate, own mother for attempting to adjust bit of a drinker. Paul, Sr., drank a bit zoo balloons deflated. That had been her collar. with great sophistication. At that time, a good lesson in obedience. A month Pammy said, “Ma, these flowers, wow, Paul, Sr., was selling a small device used later, at Ed Pedloski’s funeral, when, they really blow me away.” to stimulate tree growth. You attached it with a single harsh look, she’d ordered Just like Pammy to take her mother to a tree and supposedly the tree flour- them to march past the open coin, to lunch in a sweatshirt with a crossed- ished. When Paul, Sr., drank a bit with they’d marched past the open coin out picture of a machine gun on it. What great sophistication he made up lovely lickety-split, no shenanigans. about a nice dress? Or pants suit? At words and sometimes bowed. This dis- Poor Ed had looked terrible, hav- least this time Pammy and Paulie hadn’t tinguished-looking gentleman would ing been found after several days on been on her about the smoking. Even appear at your door somewhat sloshed his kitchen floor. back when Pammy was taking harp, and ask, Were your trees slaggard? Were “Ma, you O.K.?” Pammy said. even back when Paulie’s hair was long they gublagging behind the other trees? “Don’t be ridiculous,” Alma said. and he was dating that Eileen, even after Did they need to be prodderated? And In the early days she and Paul, Sr., Eileen slept around and Paulie shaved hold up the little device. In this way they had done it every which way. Afterward his head, whenever Paulie and Pammy had nearly lost the house. Paul, Sr., was they’d lie on the floor discussing what came over they were always on her about charming. But of-putting. In the sales colors to paint the walls. But then the the smoking. Which was rude. They sense. The eicacy of his tree stimula- children came. And they were bad. They had no right. When their father was tors was nebulous. Paul, Sr., had said cried and complained, they pooped at alive they wouldn’t have dared. When so in his low drunk voice on the night idiotic random times, they stepped on Pammy slapped her hand for adjust- that it had appeared most certain they broken glass, they’d wake from their naps ing her collar, Paul, Sr., had given her would lose the house. and pull down the window shades as she such a wallop. “Mother,” he’d said. “The eicacy of lay on the floor with Paul, Sr., not yet The town looked nice. The flags were my tree stimulators is nebulous.” having done it any which way, and she’d flying. “Ma,” Pammy said. have to rise exasperated, which would “Ma, did you like your lunch?” Pammy “What?” Alma snapped. “What do spoil everything, and when she came said. you want?” back Paul, Sr., would be out in the dis- “I liked it fine,” Alma said. “You stopped,” Pammy said. tant part of the yard having a minus- At least she didn’t have an old-lady “Don’t you think I know it?” she said. cule perschnoggle. voice. She just had her same voice, like “My knees hurt. Daughter dragging me Soon Paul, Sr., was staying out all when she was young and nobody had all over town.” night. Who could blame him? Home looked better in a tight dress going for She had not known it. She knew it was no fun. Due to Pammy and Pau- cocktails. now, however. They were opposite the lie. Drastic measures were required. She “Ma, I know what,” Pammy said. shop where the men used to cut pipe. bought the wildest underthings. Started “How about we walk up Pickle Street?” Now it was a Lean&Fit. The time they smoking again. Once, she let Paul, Sr., What was Pammy trying to do? Crip- nearly lost the house, Paulie had come spank her bare bottom as she stood in ple her? They’d been out for two hours to their bed with a cup of pennies. He just heels at the refrigerator. Once, in already. Paulie’d slept late and missed was bald these days and sold ad space in the yard, she crouched down, schnock- lunch. He’d just flown in and, boy, were the PennySaver. Pammy worked at No ered, waiting to leap out at Paul, Sr. his arms tired. Paul, Sr., had always said Animals Need Die. That was the actual And, leaping out, found him pantsless. that after a trip. Paulie had not said that. name. Place smelled like hemp. On the That was part of it. The craziness. Part Paulie not having his father’s wit. Plus it shirts and hats for sale were cartoons of of their grand love. Like when she’d find looked like rain. Black-blue clouds were cows saying things like “Thanks for Not Paul, Sr., passed out on the porch and hanging over the canal bridge. Slamming a Bolt Through My Head.” have to help him to bed. That was also “We’re going home,” she said. “You And as children they’d been so bright. part of their grand love. Even that time can drive me out to the grave.” She remembered Paulie’s Achievement he very funnily called her Milly. One “Ma,” Pammy said. “We’re not going Award. One boy had wept when he didn’t night she and Paul, Sr., stood outside, to the grave, remember?” get one. But Paulie’d got one. Yet they’d at a window, drinks in hand, watching

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 85 Paulie and Pammy wander from room No. A person misremembered. They’d you want to even know that? It didn’t to room, frantically trying to find them. worked shoulder-to-shoulder to save the amount to anything. That had—that had been in fun. That house, and the entire question of names/ “Ma, you want to go over, say hi?” had been funny. When they finally went perfumes had permanently receded, both Pammy said. “She’s an old friend, right?” back in, the kids were so relieved. Pammy of them finding it humorous that any- “Well, she’s old,” Alma said. “But burst into tears, and Paulie began pound- one could possibly think that Paul, Sr., she’s no friend of mine.” ing Paul, Sr., so fiercely in the groin with would even consider— “Ma, God,” Pammy said. his tiny fists that he had to be sent to— She was so tired. “We never had nothing to do with Well, he certainly had not been sent Stupid Pammy. her,” Alma said. “Big hippie. Never to sleep in the garden shed in the dark of Inconsiderate Pammy. meant nothing to us.” night. As he always claimed. “Home,” she said. Not much. They would not have done Up ahead, across Pine, Not much she hadn’t. that. They had—proba- sweeping her walk—was bly they’d laughed it of. that? OWIE! HERE came Alma Carlson. In their free-spirited way. It was. Z Up Pine. Daughter in tow. Pammy Then sent him to bed. For Debi Hather. Good or Kimmie or whoever. She’d seen the hitting. After which, prob- God. Was she ever old. son, Paulie, at Wegman’s yesterday, arms ably, he’d run out and hid- The strange trashy girl full of flowers. For Alma (!). Not sure den in that shed. Rebel- in high school. Big hip- how that worked: Mean Old Thing liously. They’d searched pie. Tiny head, curly hair, (Alma) gets Mother’s Day flowers; Nice, and searched. Searching no chest. Look at her over Generous Mom (her, Debi!) gets— and searching, heroically, they’d finally there, still weird: Asian blouse, pants with Lord, what a face: shrivelled apple. found him in the shed, sleeping naugh- ties at the ankles, bird-skinny. Who did Drawstring purse pulled tight. tily across a fertilizer bag, tears streak- she think she was, Gandhi or whoever? When was God or whoever going to ing the dirt on his— Mrs. Gandhi? lower the boom? On a meanie like that? Why had he been crying when he Hippie Grammie? Or did she just get to live out her life, was supposedly hiding rebelliously? Sweeping like a banshee in front of mean as all getout? Oh, God, Schmod, That was all a long time ago. that same tiny former carriage house she, Debi, wasn’t a big believer in God She wasn’t getting in the fricking she’d lived in since she was a girl. With or Hell or any of that male-based crap. time machine about it. her oddball parents. Mandy and Randy. She’d been no angel herself, having done Sky was black now over the library. Both had limps. Diferent limps. When (yes) a few drugs in her day, and also she If Pammy got her caught out in they walked down the street it was like didn’t exactly love the idea of showing the rain she would honest to God tear a freaking dance party. up at the pearly gates or whatnot and Pammy a new one. Now, hang on a briefen short second having St. Whoever look her up in his One Fourth of July, Paul, Sr., had there, Eisenstein, Paul, Sr., said in her book and go, Whoa, hey, I was just sit- groped her in the mums. He’d liked mind. Let’s poise a hyperthetical: Say ting here tabulating the number of guys that. He’d been craving more wildness. you were born to gimps and grew up you had in your life, and, yikes, can you O.K., pal, here it is. That did the trick. in a tiny house, and never had und pot- wait here a second while I go check with Around the time of the groping-in- ten to piss in. Mightn’t you have turned God on what the limit is? the-mums one ceased hearing the name out a strange lost gal with twelve or so Sweep, sweep. Milly, ditto Carol Meninger, ditto Eve- marriages behind you and a tragic run- (Why did we use that word when lyn Whoever. One briefly ceased hearing away daughter? the actual sound was more like swep?) those names and smelling those strange No, she answered. I wouldn’t have. Swep, swep. perfumes during that fleeting victorious You know that for a certainty? Because, O.K., yes, she’d loved men. period of victory-by-wildness. Where Paul, Sr., said. Well, maybe I’m just dull. And they’d loved her. Back in the day. had the kids been that magical Fourth Perhaps I fail to grasp your immensely For her? It was a form of joyous overflow. of July? Somewhere happy with spar- higher logic. Maybe, having lived a Like that art guy on TV who loved to klers, probably. Two sparklers had ap- perfect life, you’ve got all the answers. paint so much that sometimes his wife proached. Then paused. Then departed Don’t. got peeved, and he’d go, holding up his pronto. Well, that would teach them to Do not. brush, “Joyous overflow, Ruthie! Mea spy. That would teach them that adults Do not defend that one there. culpa!” She’d been like that. But with needed their private time. I merely pose the query, he said. sleeping with guys. Ha! She’d enjoyed “Behold, kiddies,” Paul, Sr., had He was bearing down on her in that every last one of them. Even the sleazes. slurred drunkenly into her bare back. way of his, not even giving the other Especially the sleazes! That salesman “Welcome to your painful eyeful.” person a chance to— from Ohio! With his little blindfolds? Soon after that wild Fourth came Wong or white, snook? he said. What had that been about? Did he carry another near-loss-of-house. All wild- Clock’s ticking! Answer, please! them everywhere? Apparently! But, God ness ceased. In the absence of wildness Well, how should she know? Who bless him, that was just him, that was his the names/perfumes resumed. she’d be if she weren’t her? Why would thing. Everyone had a thing, or several

86 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 things, and her view was, if you loved Only wouldn’t it have been cool if So, yes: tense. Tense between them. the universe (which she did, or liked to what Vicky had wanted to be was a less Tenser and tenser. Finally, senior year, think she did, or, anyway, sure tried to), subservient, more out-there type of girl, Vicky had pulled this really skillful ten- you had to love all of it. Even Mr. Ohio so self-assured that nothing ever threw sion-release move. Of bolting. Running (Tom? Tim?) with his little blindfold her? Somehow she’d got stuck with of. With that little punk Al Fowler case. Where was he now? He’d been the wrong kid. Which made for some and his stringbean cousin. Al came like fifteen years older than her. So he’d tension. Vicky was so uptight. Every- back a few months later, said they’d be . . . what? In a home? Dead? Having thing had to be perfect. Like once Vicky left her in Phoenix, she was being a his own interesting conversation with brought over this nice young guy, Rob, total bitch. St. Whoever? Re the blindfolds? Re the and she, Debi, made them mac-and- Two weeks after that, a postcard: “Ma not exactly stopping when she’d asked— cheese, but there was no milk, as she’d I’m fine don’t try to find me.” But even that—you learned some- been getting the runaround from Phil, And that was that. thing from everything. Or, at least, or maybe it was Dennis, and was a little Thirty-two years ago. she did. What she’d learned from Mr. distracted and hadn’t been to the store Not a word since. Ohio was— in a week or two, so she made it with Swep. Well, she wasn’t sure. strawberry yogurt, and the kids declined It was what it was. Don’t date guys from Ohio. to eat it, and she pointed out (just being But you know what? Actually? She Ha. honest) that they must be a couple of felt good about it. She did. She’d raised What a hoot. pretty privileged humans if they were an independent young woman. A young Swep. turning up their noses at what would woman so intent on getting what she Tim/Tom from Ohio had been fol- pass, in ninety per cent of the world, needed she hadn’t even bothered to say lowed by who? Whom? Carl, then Tobin, for a fucking feast, and at the F-word goodbye. To her own mother. That was then the Lawrence/Gary combo. After Rob (the son of surgeons) had blanched bold. That was awesome. She’d raised a that it got blurry. Lord, what a roster! or blushed or whatever (basically looked warrior princess. Because if Vicky had She’d really lived. Had not discriminated like he was about to throw up and/or said goodbye Debi would have tried to between tall/short, nerdy/cool, married/ fall over from shock), and Vicky had talk her out of it. She’d loved that kid not married, whatever. No blockages. started stuttering, and all that time so much. She would have said, like, No hangups. If you’re interested in me, Vicky—she remembered this in par- O.K., look, agreed, I’m a mess, there I thank you for that, I bow to that part ticular, this detail being so classically are too many men in my life, I’m not of you that bows to me, let’s get it on. Vicky (big self-sabotager)—had kept always available to help you with— Ha. No, really, she recanted exactly none her retainer on, like a harmonica holder. whatever, algebra or whatnot—but give of it. Why recant openness to the mo- With a boy over! What was that about? me another chance, and I’ll be more ment? Bring it! Even now, bring it! Open, open, open! She ought to run across Pine and give Alma a hug. That would freak the old bitch out. But no. If she’d learned anything in her life it was: you had to accept peo- ple the way they were. Like Vicky. Her daughter. Whoever Vicky had been at any given moment, she, Debi, had accepted it. When Vicky wanted to be a bookworm and wear those big cloddy boots and memorize everything about the French Revolu- tion and always be tidying up the house and scrubbing the toilets and whatnot, she’d been like, Go for it, kiddo, I ac- cept you. When Vicky wanted to mow the lawn because the parade was this weekend, and the whole town would see how long their grass was (as if that were a thing), have at it, amiga, even though you’re only like eight, reach way up and dig in with your cloddy boots and push that big heavy mower, I won’t be em- barrassed about it at all. Whatever Vicky had wanted to be, that had been fine with her. “It’s black, but it’s not New York black.” adultery or standing in the way of true love? I don’t know, Alma would say. Standing in the way of true love, St. Whoever would say. But he was my husband, Alma would say. Well, marriage is just a shallow cul- tural tradition, St. Whoever would say. At least, it is to us up here. She fucked him and fucked him, Alma would say, all crestfallen. Right under my nose. And I never knew. And yet here I am in Heaven, Debi would say. Think about it. Ha. That had all just popped out. The creative mind, wow. Especially hers. Well, Paul had deserved better. Than “Send in the clowns!” Alma. He was so sweet. You got the feeling that, in being a fuckhound, he •• was just acting on his true nature. He took so much joy in it, flattered you so sincerely after, never ignored you focussed on you and your needs, and tion right now. Who was correct? Debi. in public, like so many did, but always will totally disavow who I am (a per- Who was wrong? Me, Alma. Then they’d lit up when he saw you and sometimes son always trying to say yes to life) and show the movie of her life, and Alma even gave you a wink, with Alma stand- will do my best (hereby resolved!) to would see what a fuckhound Paul was ing right there, which was weirdly deli- start saying no to life, and very fakely and that would really drive it all home. cious, because Alma (she had to admit pouring myself into that constricting Would she, Debi, be standing nearby, it) had always had this sort of glamour, mold you seem to prefer me in (“Per- inside Heaven, looking on, amused? No. being one of the older girls and (oh, fect Robotic Mother”), so that noth- Because she was going to outlive Alma. she could give her this much) really ing I do will ever challenge you in the Ha. pretty. One time, at some sort of yard least or make you step even an inch No. Let’s say she was dead. She’d be party, Paul had given Debi that wink outside your tiny restrictive comfort— like, I knew you in life, Alma. Do you and they’d snuck of to a pool shed or Alma was paused now across the remember me? some such, and afterward, when he re- street. Glaring at her. As if stuck. Gosh, Debi, hi, I do, Alma would joined Alma, who was (as she so often What’s up, kid? What do you want? say. And I am so sorry. I was always a was back then, ha ha) looking worried, A bow? A salute? A wave? super-snoot to you. Paul put his hand right on Alma’s ass Here you go, pal. Yes, you were, she’d say. But I for- while giving her, Debi, a second wink, Care to wave back, Your Majesty? give you. and Alma had brightened so sweetly No? And St. Whoever would look over, at his hand on her ass, as if it really Fine. all impressed, like, Wow, even though meant something to her, that, think- Far be it from her to judge. Anyone. she always treated you like crap, you ing of that pathetic little brightening At any time. To judge was to domi- are being totally cool to her right now. now, she, Debi, felt a twinge of sister- nate. To place yourself above another. But then again you fucked my hus- hood, as in “Men are pigs, sister, are Which she refused to do. Some would. band, Alma would say. Like a gazillion they not?,” although, at the time, not so Many did. times. According to that movie I just much, because she’d just been dumped Not her. now watched. Even when I was in the by either Derek or Clive, and that sec- Although wouldn’t it be a hoot when hospital having Pammy. ond wink (which meant, as she took it, Alma kicked the bucket and St. Who- Does that come as a surprise to you? “Das Wifen has no clue how bondingly ever was like, Why so mean? Why so St. Whoever would say. About your naughty it was for you to go down on proud? Why such a hypocrite? Did you husband? me just now while sitting on that tub not find life beautiful? Where was your It does, yes, Alma would say. I lived in of chlorine”) had just made her really, heart? Why did you squander your pre- a state of self-imposed blindness, never really happy. cious life force trying to possess, con- seeking truth. Could that guy ever talk! “I am max- trol, interfere? That’s too bad, St. Whoever would imally ardent pour toi,” he’d said. She’d And Alma, newly dead, would stand say. That’s some bad juju right there. written that one down. In her Krazee there, stunned, like, I’m having a realiza- What is the greater sin, do you think, Jernel. Those were the days! You did

88 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 whoever, then wrote about it in your much smaller house until she relented, Krazee Jernel. while the wiser group gathered outside, How could Alma not have known? taunting her, enacting a sort of virtuous What a fucker Paul had been? Literally? blockade, until she was nearly dying of Debi, Linda, Milly K., that Iranian gal, hunger and— both Porter sisters, Mag Kelly, Evelyn It was so unfair. She’d loved Paul and Sonderstrom. And those were just the Paul had loved her, but she’d never got ones she personally knew about! Every- to live with him for even a single min- one knew. How could Alma not know? ute, and then he’d broken it of, and she’d You’d walk around town and there’d be had to drive by his house every day on tall pale nerdy Paul sneaking out of some her way to that stupid receptionist job, house, or leading some gal (her, Debi, watching that ugly new addition go up ha, guilty as charged) around back of (and up and up), and sometimes there’d St. Jude’s for a quickie, humming “Kum- be Alma, standing cross-armed amid the baya” ironically. A few days after that, framing, smugly smoking. he’d sent her a bracelet. Nice bracelet, And yet. actually. Still had it. She should donate Who’d triumphed? Who was happy? it. To a women’s shelter. Jesus, who had Who was happy right now? Was Alma? she been back then? Doinking a mar- She didn’t look very happy. ried guy? Behind a church? She, Debi, was happy. No, you know what? She loved that Happy in this moment, just as it woman. Praised that woman. That woman was. Wind picking up, clouds dark she’d been: authentic, spontaneous, never over the Rec, left heel out of her slip- thought twice. About anything. per: perfect. Just leapt. Game, set, match: Debi. Sometimes it was so frustrating! To Life was harsh, people said. But no. have been born in the wrong time! In the She disagreed. Life was wise. Life com- future, she was pretty sure, people would pensated. The love of your life broke it be open and free, and fuck whoever they of, and many years passed, and your wanted, and live communally, all respon- kid ran of, and that about killed you, sibilities shared, and if you dug cooking but then, laid low, you were forced to and cleaning and whatnot you’d do that, take stock, see what had been good in or if you were more creative, and felt your life, see what had been best, and more authentic hanging out with oth- when your answer was “Paul. Paul was ers, ofering counsel re their problems, the best thing that ever happened to smoking a little hash to go deeper, you’d me,” you drifted back to him, sought do that. Nobody would own anything him out, sort of lured him back into or anyone. Everyone would do exactly it, into you, and what did you get? what he liked and nobody would gos- The happiest year of your life. Of both sip about anyone or look down on any- your lives. He said so. “I’ve never been one or consider anyone slutty, and all the so happy. That’s the truth.” His exact houses would be exactly the same size, words. So she had that. Then he died. and if someone started to build some Just her luck. fancy addition, bang, everyone would be She couldn’t exactly show up at right there, going, No you don’t, we are all Chasen-Winney for visiting hours, so equal here, and if the person made a fuss she’d snuck out to the grave a few days about it, they’d simply—well, there’d be later, bawling her eyes out. Then here some sort of council. That would very came Alma. As always. The Interferer, fairly and systematically bring that élitist the Truncator. In that sweet red Granada down. To their level. Make her live in a that Paul had just bought her. For her smaller house. For penance. And some birthday. Ouch. Of she, Debi, had scur- of that wiser subgroup who had chosen ried, through the woods, ruining her to give counsel and smoke hash might new black pumps, because (who knew?) symbolically take over the oppressor’s there was a swamp back there, eventually house. Just temporarily. And her hus- stumbling out, like some sort of dispir- band. Until she was genuinely sorry. And ited ghost, at Wendy’s, where she’d had if the élitist resisted, and refused to be a milkshake, clay-red mud pooling up genuinely sorry (as judged by them, the around her wrecked shoes, that mop- wiser subgroup), she could stay in that ping kid looking over at her, like, Lady,

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 89 it’s weird that you’re crying in Wendy’s. Pretty. longest with the trashiest, strangest of Please leave, so I can clean your shit up. Ouch. Not pretty. all, always speaking kindly of her, as if And then she’d had to call Carl from Hey! Damn! What the— he actually might— work to drive her back to the graveyard “Ma, we better run for it,” Pammy Old man. Stupid old man. Old man to get her Dart. said. in love. Old man so happy, in his boxers, The end. Run? You run. I can’t, dummy, I in front of the fan, telling her all about Alone ever since. haven’t run in— it, like she was supposed to be happy, Swep. Then she was. Running. Kind of. Be- happy for him, happy for— hind Pammy. God, the shuling funny She waved Debi of. A, JEEZ, wave back,” Pammy said. way they ran now. The hail stung her We don’t need you, slut. We won’t “M “You’re acting nuts.” arms like wasps. Wasps coming straight have you. I don’t believe I will, Alma thought. down. A lemon-sized hail-thingie She leaned against the Ubernicks’ “She’s just some old lady,” smashed on the sidewalk in fence. Dirty fence. Someone should Pammy said. “Why hurt her front of them like a snow cone. paint it. feelings? Anyways, that’s what Holy crap, if that hit a “Ma?” Pammy said, trickle of blood I think.” person? running down her face. “You O.K.? Ma?” “That’s because you don’t Pammy had her sweatshirt She pushed Pammy of. She couldn’t know shit about anything,” of now and was holding it breathe. When pushed of, Pammy Alma said. “Look at you. up. Over Alma’s head. Lord, stayed of. Pammy was like that. Sweet What have you ever done?” what a kid. Standing there in but weak. No bounceback. You could The breeze was suddenly her bra, bare pink arms up. So push her right of. cold, and leaves were skitter- her ma wouldn’t get zoinked. The fence gave way. The ground came ing around. Hair full of the smaller-size up. Ouch. Cheap fence. She ought to Oh, great. Now Pammy hail-thingies, like the plas- sue those stupid Uber— was mad. Boo-hoo. Pammy was touchy. tic beadlets on them old Catholic— She was on the ground now, severed Dainty. Who knew why? She’d always She felt a rush of tenderness for bike pedal huge in her sight, ant crawl- treated Pammy-Putt square. Pammy. ing along it. The fence was up. Still up. Ha. Pammy-Putt. She’d almost for- Something clipped Pammy in the Hadn’t given way. Only she had. Why gotten they used to call her that. Pammy- head, and a red mini-divot appeared at the hell was she on the ground? Putt. With the pigtails. At the end of her hairline. Pammy seemed stunned. Oh, God, something with her heart, one pigtail a pink tie and at the end of Too stunned to move. A tree? By the something with her— the other a yellow. Because Pammy-Putt Ubernicks’. She pushed Pammy over by wanted it like that. Little Pammy-Putt, the tree. That was better. No, it wasn’t. HE CHURCH bells at St. Caspian’s rang standing on the footstool, confidently di- The hail was cutting right down through T once, twice, three times. recting the pigtailing. She hadn’t thought the branches now. A shower of snapped Rain coming. What a drag. of that in—she could smell that kid’s branches crashed down on the Uber- She’d be stuck inside all day. head now. Sort of sweet. Cloverish. nicks’ fence: one, two, threefourfive. Jesus, Across Pine, the Denisons’ sunflow- Where had that smell gone? Where they had to get out of here. One more ers were bending in the breeze. Alma had that confident little gal— branch came down, caught her on the and what’s-her-name were standing Once, Pammy-Putt came home shoulder. Hey, that hurt, clown! Like hunched over like a couple of lady from second grade asking what a laugh- the time Karl Metz had whacked her trolls. Mom troll and daughter troll, ingstock was. And what was a philan- with that hammer. out on the troll town. On Troll Moth- derer? Who’d said those things? Alma Someone was calling her name. er’s Day. How nice. How sweet. How demanded. Who’d been telling those From across the street. weird. filthy lies? She’d had a few nips. So was The hail-thingies bouncing of Debi’s One last swep. forceful. Pammy wouldn’t cough up a black umbrella looked like sweat flying Here it came. name. So she’d had Pammy stand on of a cartoon-guy’s head when he was Let it rain! Jesus, what a deluge! one foot awhile. Then Pammy-Putt got supposed to be worried. Paul, Sr., had Bring it! Yes! Gorgeous! Memo from her mouth good and scrubbed with soap once shown her a porn like that. A car- Mother Nature: I can be one crazy dame. for disobeying a direct— toon porn. The one Paulie later found. Don’t piss me of, I shall instantaneously The church bells at St. Caspian’s rang Guy so worried, watching his wife have make Pine Street a river and back up once, twice, three times. at it with a big sailor or— the gutters and cast forth (whoa! dang!) Now here came the rain. Perfect. Stu- It wouldn’t do. Wouldn’t do having a torrent of tiny pinging crystals, which pid Pammy. Eight blocks from home. Debi help. Or would it? It might. It you humans call “hail,” but which I, Her knees were shot. What’s the plan, wouldn’t. Paul had liked that one too Mother Nature, call “my wondrous dis- Pam? You carrying me? Pammy had a much. Of all of them, he’d liked her best play,” which shall resound or rebound bad back. Pammy wasn’t carrying shit. and stayed at her longest and gone back to the music I play, such that they Some little hail-thingies came bounc- to her way after all the others were done. shall—whoa! dang! fuck!—ricochet up ing up of the sidewalk. It was humiliating. That he should stay of the rain-slick black street and come

90 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 bouncing back as high as your waist, Because she, Debi, was also a person Pop! is how she would have described falling alike on the lowly and the— who had the wisdom to let the world it had she still been able to describe. Walnuts! teach the evil ones a lesson while she Pop. Golf balls! stood calmly by, watching/trusting the A number of little beings came now. Sheesh! cosmos. God, get back. You didn’t know whether Damn! She stepped back inside, slammed the to pet them or kick them. As they gazed How was Alma doing over there? Not door, shot the umbrella into the stand, up at her intently, she saw they were say- great. Getting pounded. Ha! There you retreated to the middle room, Mom and ing, Careful, girlie, careful. go, kid. There’s an example of world- Dad’s old room, angrily pulled her tax Then their boss-being came: a man. serving-as-teacher. Try snooting your things from the file cabinet, sat shuling Paul, Sr. way out of this one, Your Majesty. the forms uselessly around, thinking of Looking so handsome. From somewhere came the sound of a how strange it was (beautiful, really, a “Did you finally wake up, dear?” she parade, that distant-drum sound, which mysterious unsought blessing) that, after said. “And love the right person? The was weird, because wouldn’t it have been a lifetime of being everybody’s joke (easy one who knew you longest and under- cancelled? On account of the hail? Only lay, jilted lover, discarded mom), she was stood you best?” it wasn’t a parade; it was the sound the finally (in the eleventh hour) learning Looking at him, she saw the answer biggest hailstones yet made smashing to frigging stand up for herself. was no. down on (yikes!) the Ubernicks’ Fiesta, She stayed in there about fifteen min- Still no. the Neillys’ trash can, which—oof!— utes, fuming, getting absolutely nothing The little beings condensed into two. tumped over (as if knocked unconscious) done, until she heard the first ambulance Boy and a girl. Paul tapped them on and rolled directly out onto Pine. arrive and leapt to the window, heart the head and they turned into babies. Pammy or Cammie or whoever had in her throat, and watched as, without Who stood cowering beside Paul. Giv- her shirt of now and was making a tent even trying the shocking-paddles, they ing her the stink eye. Like he was guard- of it, over Alma. pulled the sheet up over Alma’s head ing them. From what? From her? In a Over her mother. and loaded her in. pig’s ass! It was his fault! He never let Kind of sweet, actually. Debi’s mind lurched forward, sput- us be a family! Oh, hell’s bells, hang on, somewhere tered, went (momentarily) quiet. “Now will you accept me as I am?” in this mess she must have a— Paul said. She stepped in, grabbed Dad’s LMA GOT hold of a fence slat. To What? What a crock! How about you duck-handled umbrella from the rack, A pull—pull herself out. Of this. Pain. accept me as I am? Treat me nice. Like stepped out. Something new was happening now. a wife. A real wife. Forsake all others. Because who was she? She was Debi. The tightness in her chest was worse. Love just me. Is that too much to ask? Who was Debi? Debi was generous, a Jesus. Like labor with Paulie. Then it She saw it was still a no and always generous soul. She was known for that— went past that, to labor with Pammy, would be. she gave and gave and reached out to oth- and she was giving birth to something It hurt. So much. Again. Well, if he ers, no matter how badly they’d treated bigger than Pammy, out her chest. wanted a fight, she knew how to fight. her, even a meanie like Alma, who (yes, God, oh God. She liked it. She was good at it. She’d O.K., she admitted it) she’d often wished dead, so that she might have a decent chance at the man she loved and a real house and all the things you were sup- posed to get in this world—but, no, she didn’t wish Alma dead anymore, because she, Debi, was love, was forgiveness, was goodness, was light; where there was need there was Debi, which was why she was about to do what she was about to— She stepped out, umbrella up, yelled across. Wait. Wait a minute. Had Alma waved her of? She had. Oh, my God. You have got to be kidding. What nerve! What balls! Still queen? Peasant girl still too lowly? To come fetch you, Your Highness? Stick it, Alma. Let this be a lesson to you. There is some shit I will not eat. “It is not you. It is we.” “Whose fault was it?” the girl baby asked. “His!” Alma cried. “His, his, his!” Her arms went hot right up to the elbows. Big bully! Whoever’d made her this way, unable to lie, was jerking her around now because she wouldn’t lie. The hyena-beings were closing in, all meat-breath and yellow teeth. “Whose?” the girl baby said. “Whose fault?” “I don’t know,” she cried desperately. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I really don’t! Mine? My fault?” “No,” the girl baby said. What the hell? Fine, forget the ba- bies, she’d keep the hot hands. She was what she was. No one could blame her. As long as she was Alma, she’d be mad. She had a right. Did she want to be mad? No. What she wanted to be was her, younger. Her, non-mad. Her, not yet mad. Pre-Paul. Smelling lilacs, swing- ing that diploma. No, even before that: so young she wanted nothing yet, liked nothing, disliked nothing. No, before that: before she was even Alma, because Alma would always find Paul, love Paul, •• and Paul would always be Paul. It came to her, and then was happen- make him pay. The way she always had. her. But she had the hand problem. She ing: it would be fixed when she stopped You’d think he’d know that by— went for the boy. Who toddled away. She being Alma. She looked down. Her hands were went for the girl. Who toddled away. Her arms and hands went cool and glowing. Glowing red. Then it happened again. pale, perfectly normal. “This has nothing to do with him,” the And again. She reached down, hauled the ba- girl baby said. “How do you want to be?” For like a hundred years. bies up. How could that baby talk so well? A stump appeared. At some point. “Who do you want to be?” the girl She was like a little genius. In a diaper. At least now she could sit. baby whispered into her ear as the And what did she mean? It had every- She sat trying to figure it out. stump rose just high enough to keep thing to do with him. He’d done it all. It seemed she was meant to admit them safe from the hyena-beings bark- Turned everything bad. Before Paul had that she was wrong. But she wasn’t. If she cackling below. messed with her, she’d been a smiling was wrong about this, there was no right. It was like waiting at the top of the little dear sniing lilacs on graduation Maybe she could fake it. Alpine in that little wooden car, un- day, swinging her diploma by one cor- “O.K., O.K.,” she said aloud. “I able to believe that what was about to ner. It was Paul. Paul who’d made her was wrong. The whole time. About happen was about to happen, and then, hands this way. She went to wipe her everything.” even as you thought, God, oh God, this eyes and started her hair on fire. Hands still hot. cannot possibly— No problem. The stump began rising. Lifting Didn’t hurt. her above the babies. Then: a terrible OBODY EVEN close to home in Much. bark-cackling. The beings were back. “N there,” the paramedic named Now Paul was gone. The babies With big old teeth. Henry said to the paramedic named looked lost. She should pick them up. Here they came, scrambling hyena- Claire. She went for the boy. His eyes got wide like across a vast plain. Which was rude, Claire thought. But at her hot hands. He toddled away. She Real baby-eaters. actually, no, it was fine: the daughter was went for the girl. She toddled away. It Lord, so fast. She’d have to hoist the out of earshot, sobbing against a tree. ♦ was like when you dropped a piece of babies up. She reached down, grabbed paper on a windy day and it grew a mind the boy, singed his little arm. Newyorker.com bent on eluding you. She stood still. How to do it, how to do it, how to George Saunders on taking four years to write The babies drifted back. They wanted get her hands to cool? a story.

92 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016

THE CRITICS

POP MUSIC HIDDEN WONDERS Sia’s response to stardom.

BY CARRIE BATTAN

IA FURLER, the forty-year-old Aus- She got sober, and abandoned her solo tective measures. She began wearing S tralian artist who goes by her first recording career to focus on writing the wigs, along with paper bags over name, is a pop star, but other labels are songs for other pop stars. The plan her face, in a symbolic efort, she said, equally appropriate. She is both an in- was to exploit her musical gifts with- to hide from Internet commenters and dustry veteran and a newcomer to star- out the pressures of publicity. widespread attention. Of course, there dom, a background figure and a ubiq- The line between the front and the is nothing like anonymity to generate uitous force. She’s also a prankster and back of the house in pop can be a tricky interest in an artist—just ask Elena a provocateur, a peddler of cheap gim- one to cross—very few people manage Ferrante, if you find her—and Sia’s dis- micks and high-minded performance it, in either direction—but in recent guises brought her fame as much as art. In the past two years, while mak- years it’s been diicult to avoid hear- they insulated her from it, as she surely ing the rounds of talk shows, she hid ing Sia’s music. She has written for must have known they would. (Some- under an oversized wig. She invited col- Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Beyoncé, one who appears on “Saturday Night laborators to serve as proxies onstage, and, most notably, Rihanna. Their col- Live,” as Sia has, can’t be entirely un- and perform a series of dances to her laboration “Diamonds,” a high-drama interested in notoriety.) hit “Chandelier.” Often, a tiny teen- minimalist ballad, reached No. 1 on the You might assume that an eccen- ager named Maddie Ziegler danced Billboard charts in 2012 and has sold tric artist who writes mainstream hits while Sia, nearly out of sight, belted millions of copies. Sia has said that for others would use her own album as her song. If you were to watch these the song took about twenty minutes a place for experimentation. But Sia’s performances on mute, you might think to write, the words tumbling from her new record, “This Is Acting,” shows a you had happened upon a public- access mouth involuntarily. Perhaps unsurpris- mastery of formula rather than a re- broadcast of an interpretive-dance re- ingly, taken at face value, they can seem bellion against it. Sia today is rem- cital rather than a song with more than nonsensical—“Shining bright like a di- iniscent of Lady Gaga early in her a billion YouTube views. amond / We’re beautiful like diamonds career—there’s a similar cultivation This marked a new phase in Sia’s in the sky”—but when delivered with of outlandish afectations while mak- long history of shape-shifting. She enough vigor they feel profound. ing straightforward work. Many of the began her career, in the nineties, as a Sia continued to write music with songs on “This Is Acting” were writ- vocalist in the acid-jazz band Crisp, be- big-name artists in mind. But when she ten for pop stars but never found the fore joining the British electronic group came up with a song about drowning right home. And yet Sia inhabits them Zero 7. With a sharp ear for melody, sorrow in excessive partying, which just as comfortably as any of her col- a soulful voice, and a knack for bridg- she planned to send to Rihanna, she laborators. “This Is Acting” is the Pla- ing genres, she began releasing exper- couldn’t bear to give it away, so she re- tonic ideal of a modern pop album: like imental solo records in 1997. For the corded it herself. This was “Chandelier,” Adele, Sia writes sturdy, direct songs next decade, she experienced patches a triumphal burst of emotion and or- whose power derives from force rather of success. In 2005, buoyed by a song chestral arrangements. It achieved an- than from flourish. DAY JAMES BY PHOTOGRAPH called “Breathe Me,” which appeared them status, putting Sia on the charts Which is not to say that Sia’s music in the series finale of the HBO show for the first time and earning her four feels anonymous. She is one of the “Six Feet Under,” Sia went on a long Grammy nominations—the exact sit- most distinctive and acrobatic vocal tour of the United States. She decided uation that she had hoped to avoid. performers working today, her high- that road life, and her increased visibil- The song was the lead single on “1000 register rasp instantly recognizable. Her ity, didn’t suit her: she took drugs and Forms of Fear,” the 2014 album that songs sit somewhere between balladry drank heavily, and she struggled with made her famous. “It turns out I am and modern dance-pop. Everything is promotional obligations. By the time ambitious,” she told Howard Stern. in service of a larger-than-life chorus, she released her 2010 album, “We Are “And I do want a No. 1 record.” But each song a vehicle for anthemic cathar-

Born,” she was ready to make a change. this time she took stronger self-pro- sis. She is wiser and more world-weary OPPOSITE: GUIDO SCARABOTTOLO; ABOVE:

94 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 Though some of Sia’s biggest hits have been written for others, her high-register rasp is instantly recognizable.

ILLUSTRATION BY IAN WRIGHT THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 95 than the girlish Katy Perry, more im- passioned than the ice-cool Rihanna, more demure than the slinky Beyoncé. Sia is a balladeer at heart, and she is at her best when she uses her voice as her primary tool.

N THE case of contemporary pop, I there is near-constant debate over who deserves the credit—the people who write and produce the work or the artists who perform it—and whether or not the structure generates any mean- ingful art. But perhaps we should look at pop music less as a product of in- dividual artistry than as a reflection of the collective consciousness of the audience. Together, writers, producers, and performers expend most of their energy calculating a way to connect to that consciousness. Sia’s chief talent is understanding what audiences want. What does her work tell us about the inchoate, generalized desires of pop listeners? Mostly, that we like to feel a sense of triumph over adversity, real or imagined. Torment and victory are the two constant presences on re- cent albums, and every song can be distilled to a simple line that would befit a Facebook status update about feeling a little better than you once did: I’m alive, I’m alive. I’m unstoppa- ble today. One million bullets could come my way. Reaper, don’t come for me today. This too shall pass, we’re right where we’re meant to be. These lyrics would be overwhelmingly cheesy if they weren’t also powerful, afecting, and impossi- ble to resist. In April, Sia will play at the Coachella festival; it will mark her first large-scale live performance in half a decade. Maybe she’ll show her face, or maybe she won’t. The people in the crowd probably won’t be too con- cerned—they’ll get their fix of uplift 1either way.  Constabulary Notes from All Over From the Wilmette (Ill.) Beacon.

A Fannie May Candies store employee reported that between 7:47-8:04 p.m., an el- derly couple entered the store at 1515 Sheridan Road, and attempted to steal a box of choco- lates by concealing it in a bag. When the em- ployee found the hidden box and confronted the couple, the male subject pushed the em- ployee, and the couple left the store. The male ofender was identiied as an 82-year-old from Winnetka. reality TV and the expansion of cable ON TELEVISION news. It’s a tasty Proustian cronut that makes you remember the events of not only 1995 but 2015. NOT-GUILTY PLEASURE As one might expect of a Ryan Mur- phy production, particularly one done The calculations of “American Crime Story: The People vs. O. J. Simpson.” in collaboration with the writers of “Ed Wood,” “American Crime Story” is filled BY EMILY NUSSBAUM with dark humor, including a few camp touches. The show’s poster depicts O.J. with his hands, one wearing the noto- rious leather glove, over his eyes. The sixth episode is titled “Marcia Mar- cia Marcia.” The Beastie Boys’ “Sab- otage” pounds over the Bronco chase, L.L. Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out” over the not-guilty plea. Yet the series is not, in the first six episodes sent to critics, crude or cartoonish but ideologically and emotionally nuanced, with each episode providing a shift in perspective, as if turning a daisy wheel of empathy. This is in contrast with the more brutalist style of the book, which ripples with disgust at the players’ cyni- cism. (“Shamelessness is a moral, rather than a legal, concept,” Toobin writes, in a typical parenthetical.) In a sig- nature move, the creators have turned Robert Kardashian, a sycophantic dope in Toobin’s telling, into a near-hero, a gloomy Sancho Panza with Christian faith. Yes, his close friend was a homi- cidal narcissist. But, when you com- mit a double murder, Kardashian (as equipped with Schwimmer’s hangdog Ross Geller gaze) is definitely the guy you’ll want by your side, baled when The series feels hot-wired with modern parallels, extending beyond the Simpson case. you flunk the polygraph test. Murphy and his collaborators strip E ARE Kardashians,” Robert ander and Larry Karaszewski, and pro- the story to its elements, from the time “W Kardashian (David Schwim- duced by Ryan Murphy and his long- that the bloody-footed Akita dragged a mer) tells his four children, who bounce time production partner Brad Falchuk, neighbor over to the corpses of Brown in a booth at L.A.’s ChinChin restau- among others. The series, like the book Simpson, who had been nearly decap- rant, giddy that their dad has been rec- it’s based on—“The Run of His Life,” itated, and Goldman, stabbed multiple ognized from his appearances on cable from 1997, by my colleague Jefrey Too- times. Visually, the show is pure Los news, sticking up for his friend O. J. bin—is unambiguous about Simpson’s Angeles, bright and dynamic, with the Simpson. “And in this family being a guilt in the murder of his ex-wife, Ni- cameras observing with amused the- good person and a loyal friend is more cole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron atricality the pomp of elaborate L.A. important than being famous. Fame is Goldman. But this is no dutiful nineties houses, their kitchen islands as big as fleeting. It’s hollow. It means nothing at period piece (and, yes, I know that’s a Mustique. The series’ real strength, all without a virtuous heart.” horrifying phrase, whatever your age). however, is its panoply of eccentric, Is there a force more caustic, and Instead, the series feels hot-wired with and almost universally delightful, per- more propulsive, than mere irony? If modern parallels, which extend far be- formances. The most outrageous of so, that’s the substance flowing through yond those baby Kardashians. Without these is by John Travolta, as the liti- “American Crime Story: The People vs. ever mentioning the links, the creators gator Robert Shapiro, one of the few O. J. Simpson,” on FX, an addictive, mi- evoke the Cosby scandal and Black Lives characters who come in for a real beat- raculously well-cast dramatization of the Matter, the debate about Hillary’s “lik- ing. Travolta plays Shapiro as an Easter 1995 murder case, created by Scott Alex- ability” and Obama’s legacy, the rise of Island head of fatuousness, with Spock

ILLUSTRATION BY OWEN FREEMAN THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 97 eyebrows and pursed lips, trailing fa- huckster, a preacherly clown, like “Sein- Many of the sharpest scenes in mous names like bread crumbs. Con- feld” ’s Jackie Chiles. In the book, Toobin “American Crime Story” explore nie Britton shoplifts scenes as Nicole’s portrays him as brilliant but also mon- the sticky interaction of race, fame, friend Faye Resnick, drawling her first strous, a strategist who could work racial and class. When Clark’s boss tells her line like an aria of decadence: “She aggrievement into a plate of cookies. The that they’re holding the trial down- was my personal angel. I wouldn’t have show grants him more gravitas, mainly town, she cracks, “Doesn’t Simpson de- gone to rehab if it weren’t for her.” As by emphasizing the complex intersection serve a jury of his peers? You know, rich, Simpson, Cuba Gooding, Jr., captures of his private and public selves. There’s middle-aged white men?” Lawyers on the football star’s gasbag egotism but a flashback to Cochran getting pulled both sides invoke, in sober tones, “the falls short of the regal charisma that over by the cops, with his daughters in downtown dialect” and “optics,” code drew people to him. Less showy per- the car, for driving in a white neighbor- for skin tone. In one of Cochran’s most formers hit their mark harder, espe- hood. He’s as much an observer as he brilliant manipulations, he stages Simp- cially Steven Pasquale as a terrifyingly is a talker, standing back as the “dream son’s mansion for visiting jurors, remov- self-controlled Detective Mark Fuhr- team” snipes at one another like the Real ing nude portraits of white girlfriends, man, all “yes, ma’am” and bigotry be- Litigators of Beverly Hills. Cochran is a subbing in the Heisman trophy and hind the eyes. master of code-switching, when it comes Afrocentric art, along with the Norman Still, the heart of “American Crime to the media: he dismisses the Simpson Rockwell painting “The Problem We Story” is its daring humanization of a case as “a loser” to a producer, then unc- All Live With.” (“It’s on loan—from trio of lawyers who were so filleted in tuously ofers sympathy when the cam- the Coch ran Collection,” he jokes.) A the media that they’re now remembered eras blink on. trenchant sequence (directed by John primarily in satirical form, through im- But it’s clear that, like Clark, Cochran Singleton) features a dinner party that itations on “Seinfeld” and late-night wants justice, except from a diferent the Vanity Fair journalist Dominick TV: the prosecutors Marcia Clark (the angle. Police brutality is not an abstrac- Dunne hosts for his white high-society one with the haircut) and Christopher tion to him; from a certain perspective, friends, at which he regales them with Darden (who made O.J. try on the any force that hires a cop as dirty as seamy tidbits about the case. Midway bloody glove in court), and the defense Fuhrman has basically framed itself. through one of Dunne’s anecdotes, the attorney Johnnie Cochran (“If it doesn’t Some of the best scenes take place in table goes silent. The waiter has arrived, fit, you must acquit”). On “American Cochran’s mansion, where he and his and he is black. Horror Story,” Murphy’s other an- wife relax, freed from the eyes of white For all its jauntiness, the show is re- thology series, Sarah Paulson has a diva- people, making sexy jokes and polishing spectful about the crime, and includes glam intensity, but her Marcia Clark his banter. “A blunders-in-blue opera- a painful scene involving Goldman’s fa- is a more life-size figure, vulnerable tion,” he suggests, and then, frowning, ther, who raves, devastated, at how his beneath her matte lipstick and beauty hits on a better phrase: “Contaminated. son has been turned into “a footnote to mark. A fiery advocate for victims of Compromised. And corrupted!” “Oh, his own murder.” But the creative team’s domestic violence, Clark is guilty less baby,” his wife says, laughing. “That’s it! most unusual choice is in pinpointing of arrogance than of excessive purism: That is it. Mmm-hmm. It has a flow, a less typical object of sympathy: Chris- she’s so certain she’s got the goods on honey.” Alone among the ensemble, topher Darden, the young African- O.J. that she keeps taking the higher Cochran enjoys the greatest power of all: American prosecutor, engaged in a flir- ground, dumping key witnesses when he knows exactly how to play himself. tation with his boss, Marcia Clark. As they make deals with tabloids and re- played with gentle warmth by Sterling K. fusing to cut jurors based on race, even ROM THE vantage point of 2016, it Brown, Darden lacks both Clark’s righ- when her consultant warns her that F is far easier, for a person like me, to teousness and Cochran’s canny control. black women hate her. As the case drags understand why Simpson was acquit- When he’s promoted for his “optics,” on, Clark’s confidence crumbles, de- ted (and the case was about nothing if he becomes perfect prey for Coch ran’s graded by tabloid gossip about her not such demographic calculations). The mind games, then gets cast in the press looks, her sex life, her divorce, and her Rodney King acquittal and the L.A. riots as an Uncle Tom. In one confronta- child-custody battle. In one pungent were just three years before; Fuhrman tion, the lawyers clash over whether sequence, Clark gets that famously awful reportedly collected Nazi medals, lied the N-word should be allowed on the haircut, then drifts past a firing squad about using racial slurs, and bragged stand. Only after Cochran has shredded of gawkers, like Carrie at the prom, as about torturing suspects. Why wouldn’t Darden’s argument does he murmur an her face quivers with recognition that a black jury believe that he planted evi- aside, one that only his opponent can she’s become a dirty joke. She longs to dence? It didn’t matter that O.J. barely hear: “Nigga, please.” In Darden’s fail- be an avenging angel, but the world thought of himself as black, or that he’d ures, “American Crime Story” finds not sees only a dowdy bitch. palled around with cops, hosting them incompetence but a buried tragedy, Courtney B. Vance gives a layered, at Brentwood pool parties, or that he about the confines of identity and the subtle performance as the master show- had a history of beating Nicole. Iden- isolation of being forced to pick a team, man Johnnie Cochran, Clark’s most pow- tity can function as a game of rock- then stick with it, at any cost. He’d erful antagonist—a quiet take on a bold paper-scissors. In Judge Ito’s court, two be an invisible man, if it weren’t for all man. My memories of Cochran are of a decades ago, race beat gender. the cameras. 

98 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 album “Piñata” (originally titled “Cocaine A CRITIC AT LARGE Piñata”), featuring the vocalist Freddie Gibbs, is a trancelike and jumpy ode to consciousness. On the title track, the rap- THE WAV E S per Mac Miller outs himself as a book- worm (Madlib is also an inveterate reader), The brotherhood of Madlib. while fronting about the kind of sex you know that dweeb isn’t having: BY HILTON ALS My endorphins are morphin’, absorbin’ energy Original copy, A Tale of Two Cities gets read to me Reading Emerson novels, eating some Belgian wales Some powder go up my nostrils, my dick going down her tonsils . . . In January, Kanye West released his first Madlib-produced track, “No More Parties in L.A.” (It will be included on his album “Waves,” which is set to come out this month.) The song sounds like noth- ing that West has ever been part of; it has a depth beyond his bombast and a soulful mellowness that dials him down—a bit. Featuring Kendrick Lamar, “No More Parties” samples work by Walter (Junie) Morrison, of the seventies funk band Ohio Players, as well as Ghostface Killah’s 2000 track “Mighty Healthy.” The intro is courtesy of Johnny (Guitar) Watson’s 1977 tune “Give Me My Love,” and the bridge comes from Larry Graham’s 1980 song “Stand Up and Shout About Love.” Making the past matter in the present is just one aspect of Madlib’s genius, as is pushing hip-hop’s more commercially minded performers to move beyond the fans and the record-company executives and listen to themselves.

ORN OTIS Jackson, Jr., in Oxnard, Cal- B ifornia, Madlib is the son of musi- cians: his father was a singer and a jazz and soul session musician; his mother was a songwriter and a piano player. The Jacksons were as interested in the history of black music as they were in perform- Making the past matter in the present is just one aspect of Madlib’s genius. ing it; soul music had a lineage, a fam- ily—some of whose members turned DON’T KNOW why, exactly, but whenever to his credit; in the past five years alone, up in Madlib’s own back yard. Jon Fad- I I hear anything by or featuring Madlib, he’s released thirteen and helped produce dis, the jazz trumpeter and educator, is the protean, forty-two-year-old, Los five. His collaborators on these projects, Jackson’s uncle. “Dizzy Gillespie would Angeles-based self-described “d.j. first, for the most part, have been men of color come by, eating gumbo,” Jackson told producer second, and m.c. last,” I start who, not unlike Madlib, are serious goof- Andre Torres, in Wax Poetics, in 2013. “It thinking about black male fraternity, a balls or smart knuckleheads, artists who was crazy. My grandparents were friends subject that Madlib keeps coming back to aim to pervert hip-hop’s early stance— with all of them. Dee Dee Bridgewa- directly and indirectly in his work, which what Michele Wallace called the myth ter, all of them, they’d come through.” is jumbled, cinematic, and layered in tone of “Black Macho”—while embracing their Black sounds—the sonic landscape of and style. Madlib has some sixty albums own deep nerdiness. The 2014 Madlib the African-American diaspora—were

PHOTOGRAPH BY GRAEME MITCHELL THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 99 both alive and archival. At home, Jackson machines, samplers, and so on were no bump up against the rap, and each com- immersed himself in his father’s record longer the province of studio engineers; municates a distinct message: Lootpack collection, but he had no real desire to they were now mass-produced and could would not be bought or sold. On the al- make or perform music—at least, not in a be bought on the cheap. Plus, you didn’t bum’s title cut, Madlib raps: traditional way. He’d “fiddle” at the piano need a trained voice or show-biz glitz to Most people nowadays talk about representin’ and tried to learn to play the drums, but perform a rap song. The lyrics weren’t re- They strictly smokin’ Phillies, actin’ ill, none of it took. What fascinated him was stricted, as popular music has always been, gettin’ bent, and how a record was made. to stories of love or fun. Most of the The ways of the industry mad shady As the son of a black man who cared— rappers Madlib admired when he was tinted . . . Whether you in Texas, L.A., or Trenton and stayed—Jackson spent his formative growing up sang about black male alien- Alaska, Nebraska, Japan ya have ta years outside the tired Negro narrative of ation and life inside or outside “the Know the diference from a fake m.c. to the absent or abusive father. A hallmark system”—but what if you didn’t feel a real m.c. of his style as a producer is his incredible, doomed by your blackness or your mas- nearly paternal concern for the artists he’s culinity or your dreams? The hip-hop T WAS as Quasimoto, a “fake,” or in- showcasing. (He has three children of his producer and sample czar Prince Paul, a I vented, m.c., that Madlib started to own.) When he was invited by Blue Note native of Long Island who is best known attract a wider audience, at least among Records to dig into the company archives for his work with De La Soul and RZA, the hip-hop cognoscenti. In 2000, Stones for his 2003 remix album, “Shades of put forth a story that was about black Throw released “The Unseen,” Madlib’s Blue,” Madlib paid special homage to Hor- manhood, too, but one that stressed the jazzy, spaced-out, and on-point evocation ace Silver’s “Song for My Father,” from humor and the ridiculousness of it. of his alter ego’s inner life. Quasimoto, 1965, doubling back on certain phrases (Think early Ishmael Reed, with a beat.) who sounded as if he’d inhaled a healthy and elegant rifs without obscuring Sil- Madlib, who is six years younger than dose of helium, was amped up in a way ver’s melodic line—or his sentiment. Paul, has always got of on the absurdity that Madlib was not. Madlib has said While Otis, Sr., schooled the future of being a walking target, but to that he that he developed the voice because, at beat master in the music of the past, an adds an understanding of the gamble that point in his career, he didn’t like rap- older brother, Pete, introduced him to that is black life, in which expectations ping as himself; his voice was too deep the sounds of the younger generation— are dashed—or repressed. and he sounded tired. “When it comes early hip-hop. “The first record I heard In elementary school, Jackson hooked to my own lyrics, I have to think about was ‘Rapper’s Delight,’ sorry to say,” Jack- up with his classmates Jack Brown (the it more than Quas does,” he explained son told Torres. Writing in this magazine future Wildchild) and Romeo Jimenez in a 2005 interview. “He brings ideas, in 2004, Sasha Frere-Jones drew a dis- (now DJ Romes) to form a pop-locking and then I come with it.” tinction between the shiny sound-booth group. In high school, in the late eighties, The record starts with what sounds finish of corporate hip-hop—Kanye, Dr. the three became Lootpack, and Jackson like a public-service announcement, or Dre, and others—and the stubborn in- soon took on the stage name Madlib. a warning. “Ladies and gentlemen, wel- dividualism of artists like Madlib, who Lootpack’s version of West Coast rap— come to violence,” a man says, his voice stick to their samples instead of paying with mental gunplay in place of fire- pinched and reserved. He continues, as musicians to compose for them. (Madlib arms—went nowhere fast; they couldn’t sampled sinuous rhythms gather be- uses turntables and analog recording de- get record companies interested. (In hind his speech like snakes, “While vi- vices in an age of digital everything.) olence cloaks itself in a plethora of dis- “Rapper’s Delight,” with its cheery pop- guises, its favorite mantle remains sex.” ulism, isn’t something that Madlib would That’s when dirty-minded Quasimoto ever sample in his work, except, perhaps, steps in; right away we know, from his as a joking comment on his past. Still, delightful creepiness and need, that he’s that song and others alerted him to the an id, ready to force his message down world of producers and beat makers, in- our throats with a laugh. cluding early greats like Too Short, Rox- Quasimoto is not unlike the char- anne Shanté, and DJ Pooh, who didn’t acters Prince Paul created in his amaz- so much create beats as reimagine or feel 1995, Jackson’s father financed Loot- ing 1999 hip-hopera, “A Prince Among them, scratching and rapping lyrics that pack’s first EP, “Psyche Move.”) Even- Thieves.” In a 2014 interview, Madlib linked the past to the present. tually, the band caught the attention of pointed to the influence that another Hip-hop grew out of an independent the L.A. producer and d.j. Peanut Butter Prince Paul-produced album—De La spirit and a love of community. On the Wolf, who ran the Stones Throw label, Soul’s prickly, hippie “3 Feet High and East Coast, in the seventies and early and in 1999 he put out their first studio Rising” (1989)—had on him. “That’s kind eighties, block parties were a form of so- album, “The Anthem.” On it, Madlib not of where my whole style for Quasimoto cial entertainment, an alternative to the only scratches and samples other vocal- came from,” he said. But Quasimoto isn’t dominant genres of disco and stadium ists and sounds; he also gives us a jazz a crew, like De La Soul. A latter-day rock. You didn’t need a building to house flutist playing a mellow tune—a nod, no Ignatz, he revels in life’s jokes, get- rap; it could be produced outdoors, and doubt, to the legend Bobbi Humphrey. ting blunted or twisted by bad vibes, feed of the energy of the crowd. Drum The sound isn’t smooth. The samples and unwinding through wit. (Madlib

100 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 said, probably jokingly, that Quasimoto is Madlib’s 2006 release “Beat Konducta the only guy he doesn’t get along with.) Vol. 1-2: Movie Scenes,” which samples One guy Madlib more than got along dialogue from films and from artists such with was the late beat master, rapper, and as Richard Pryor—Madlib has said that remixer James Dewitt Yancey, or J Dilla. the album is a soundtrack to the movie Born in Detroit in 1974, J Dilla, like in his head—shares that intensity and has Madlib, formed a band in high school— a similar sense of fun, as if the sonic world Slum Village—that was committed to were being remade not according to or exploring hip-hop’s roots while address- in reaction against hip-hop but accord- ing contemporary matters. The group ing to Madlib. “Beat Konducta Vol. 3-4: developed a following in Detroit’s un- Beat Konducta in India” came out in 2007, derground hip-hop scene. Dilla also be- and fuses Bollywood music and dialogue came sought after as a remixer and a pro- with hip-hop beats to create a deliciously ducer, working with artists like Janet mad score for a movie you definitely want Jackson, Common, Busta Rhymes, and to see. In 2009, Madlib released “Beat the Roots, whom he made sound both Konducta Vol. 5-6: A Tribute to . . . ,” an diferent and like themselves. In 2001, epic composed of dense miniatures, his Peanut Butter Wolf put Madlib and Dilla response to the loss of Dilla. together; it didn’t take Madlib long to realize that Dilla—the son of an opera OUNG BLACK masculinity finds its el- singer and a jazz bassist—was a kind of Y ders—if they want to be found. As brother in music. “Dilla was a John Col- Quasimoto, Madlib rapped about “lis- trane-type dude,” Madlib told an inter- tening to Sun Ra / Early George Benson viewer in 2010. “He was always on a higher on down to Hampton Hawes.” In 2000, level. He inspired my music to become he started his own jazz group, Yesterdays looser and more soulful.” New Quintet, for which he is the pro- Erykah Badu, who has made some of ducer, arranger, and engineer. (Rumor her best work with Madlib, described the has it that all the members of the group way the two artists worked: “They’re so are actually Madlib playing under vari- serious about what they are doing. They ous aliases.) To listen to albums such as make beats all day long. That’s what they the powerful, eclectic “Slave Riot,” from do. All. Day. Long. Don’t even save them, 2010, is to hear the artists that Madlib just put them onto a CD. They give out grew up on, including the legendary jazz these CDs, volume No. 1 to No. 5, up bandleader Weldon Irvine. (Irvine wrote to No. 121.” In 2003, the duo released the lyrics for the seminal song “To Be their first album, “Champion Sound,” Young, Gifted and Black,” in 1969, and on which half the songs were produced lived long enough to be part of Mos Def ’s by Madlib and half by J Dilla; each art- solo début, “Black on Both Sides,” in 1999. ist raps, but only on tracks produced Two years after Irvine’s suicide, in 2002, by the other. There’s a great warmth to Madlib released the album “A Tribute to the record, and Madlib’s work has a Brother Weldon.”) new kind of interiority—less sonic thicket One also hears Irvine’s voice, ask- and more sunlight. Plus, there’s a more ing not to be forgotten, on “Madvillainy,” professional sheen; J Dilla’s product had Madlib’s justly celebrated 2004 collabo- the kind of high finish that Madlib can ration with the London-born rapper MF rarely be bothered with. Doom. The record’s phantasmagoria un- After “Champion Sound” came out, derlines Doom’s metaphor-laden exam- J Dilla moved to L.A. and he and Madlib ination of the black male body as target began performing together. But J Dilla and familiar unfamiliar. But the low- died, of a rare blood disease, in 2006, three tech nature of the sound and the style are days after Stones Throw released “Do- Madlib’s. As Madlib says, “The equip- nuts,” his masterpiece. Reviewing the ment doesn’t matter, it’s the vibe you put record on Pitchfork when it was reissued, into it. If the music sounds good, music several years ago, Nate Patrin wrote: sounds good.” When Madlib talks about hip-hop and its myriad forms within the As an album, it just gets deeper the longer form, he’s usually also talking about him- you live with it, front-to-back listens revealing emotions and moods that get pulled in every self. “I’m with the times,” he has said, “but direction: mournful nostalgia, absurd comedy, I want to have the past in my shit, too. raucous joy, sinister intensity. Past, present, and future is where I’m at.” ♦

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 101 schoolboy in a Southern Republican BOOKS state (so we surmise; the state is un- specified), the narrator got close to an- other boy, who is referred to simply as UNSUITABLE BOYS “K.” The two became tender friends, united in their shared solitude, politics, Novels about Americans looking for love in Europe. and love of books. The narrator essen- tially fell in love with K. but was young BY JAMES WOOD enough to be still working out the grav- ity of his feelings for his friend, and whether those feelings were likely to be reciprocated. One night, the two boys embrace, touch each other’s naked torso, sleep next to each other. But they go no further than that, and the next morning K., who is feeling unwell, seems to put a new distance between the two of them. A few weeks later, as if to punish the narrator, K. announces that he has a girl- friend. In an extraordinary and almost unbearable scene, K. asks the narrator to come over to his house, and makes him watch as he and his girlfriend have sex. The narrator understands that he is being used in a triumphal lesson: “I was there not as guard but as audience. I was there to see how diferent from me he was.” Walking in Sofia, the adult narra- tor remembers this early pain, and re- members, too, how his father came to read his diary, and how violently he re- sponded to the revelation of his son’s sexuality: “You disgust me, he said, do you know that, you disgust me, how could you be my son?” In Sofia, the narrator has reached an area of scrubby ground near Soviet-style apartment blocks. He decides that he In Garth Greenwell’s début, an American is obsessed with a Bulgarian hustler. will not return to America: “I wouldn’t answer, I wouldn’t see my father again, BOUT A third of the way through His father is back in the States, and con- I wouldn’t mourn him or pour earth on A Garth Greenwell’s first novel, vention promises a lovingly described him.” He balls up the paper and throws “What Belongs to You” (Farrar, Straus return, full of sweet struggle, savory am- it into a little urban stream that flows & Giroux), there occurs one of those bivalence. We have all read these cus- unexpectedly close to the apartments. moments that have become formulaic tomary fictions. (Reader, I wrote one.) This long swerve from and around in contemporary fiction-making: the Greenwell resists the consolations of convention, which takes about forty protagonist is summoned home; his fa- custom. The narrator walks out of the pages, ofers as good an example as any ther is ill, “gravely” so, and wants his son school, holding a paper copy of the e-mail of the originality and power of Garth to come back, despite the fact that they that brought him the news. He wanders Greenwell’s slim novel. Instead of re- have not spoken in years. Such requests through Sofia, remembering the pain- turning to America, the writer stays in- are a device, part of the machinery ful series of events that resulted in his side the narrator’s head: the walk through whereby one character is forced to reckon father’s banishment of him. What he Sofia is essentially an extended stream with homecoming, and thus forced to recalls is vivid and hurtful; he has a full of consciousness (which ends when the interact with another character; often, larder of grievance. When the narrator narrator tosses his memories into a real this brings an entire family together. was a child, his father divorced and re- stream). It is rare to find a first-time This particular protagonist, who is the married; he has been chronically un- novelist who’s so sure of what to choose novel’s narrator, is a young American faithful. But the sharper memory has to and what to abjure; the novel has enough who has been teaching at an American do with the father’s response to the dis- social detail to do its work, but very lit- school in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia. covery of his son’s homosexuality. As a tle by the standards of contemporary

102 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 ILLUSTRATION BY MIKKEL SOMMER realism. We don’t know the narrator’s acter in the story to be given a name— tagion, and I was at once bewildered by name, or where or when, exactly, he grew is always announcing to the narrator, this and unsurprised.” up. We don’t discover much else about “You owe me.” Greenwell subtly lays bare Greenwell knows what he is doing, his father; K. doesn’t appear again; there the tormenting dynamic of a relation- and knows the long history of the im- is no superfluous backstory. The novel ship structured by inequality. The two plied relationship, both resisted and ex- contains no direct dialogue, only reported men speak in Bulgarian, which means ploited by gay writers, between homo- speech; scenes are remembered by the that the narrator, whose Bulgarian is sexuality and disease or disability: the narrator, not invented by an omniscient poor, can’t always understand Mitko, and section about the syphilis revelation is author, which means that the writing expresses himself basically, without “any entitled “Pox.” Greenwell’s novel is bril- doesn’t have to involve itself in those of my usual defenses.” Sometimes the liantly self-aware, and may be animat- feats of startup mimesis that form the narrator wants to “save” Mitko; some- ing the ghost of J. R. Ackerley, whose grammar, and gamble, of most novels. times he recoils from him, or is menaced father died of syphilis, and whose novel, In an age of the sentence fetish, Green- by him. Always, he desires him. He con- “We Think the World of You,” concerns well thinks and writes, as Woolf or Se- cludes that Mitko has never been any- a gay middle-class narrator and the love bald do, in larger units of comprehen- thing other than “alien” to him, because he has for an elusive working-class man. sion; so consummate is the pacing and love is not merely “a matter of looking “What Belongs to You” is fairly explic- control, it seems as if he understands at someone . . . but also of looking with itly about shame, punishment, and dis- this section to be a single long sentence. them, of facing what they face.” gust, among other things. What is un- Rhythm, order, music, and lucid ex- Once again, the novel inhabits con- usual is not the presence of these themes position: there is undeniably a manda- ventional motifs in order to renovate but the book’s complicated embrace of rin quality to the way that Greenwell them. Stories about hustlers or prosti- “foulness,” and a barely suppressed long- narrows the frame of his inquiry and tutes are commonplace in both straight ing for punishment, a longing embod- then perfectly fills this reduced space. and gay fiction. But Greenwell tells a ied in the narrator’s relationship with But if the novel’s formal control has a new story about client and prostitute. Mitko. Greenwell’s novel impresses for rare delicacy there is nothing at all her- Mitko and the narrator violently part many reasons, not least of which is how metic about the story the narrator tells, company, but are brought back together perfectly it fulfills its intentions. But it which has a bitter urgency. Not long after when the Bulgarian turns up one night gains a diferent power from its uneasy his arrival in Sofia, the narrator encoun- at the narrator’s pleasant apartment to atmosphere of psychic instability, of con- ters Mitko, a handsome young Bulgar- tell him that he has syphilis, and that fession and penitence, of diicult forces ian hustler. He pays him for sex, a trans- the narrator should probably get him- acknowledged but barely mastered and action that inaugurates a relationship of self tested. For the narrator, the news re- beyond the conscious control of even this profound imbalance. On the one hand, vives memories of the AIDS era, when he gifted novelist. the narrator has a greedy sexual hunger was growing up: “Disease was the only for Mitko, and may indeed be in love story anyone ever told about men like ARRYL PINCKNEY’S second novel, with him; his neediness for someone who me where I was from, and it flattened D “Black Deutschland” (Farrar, Straus appears likely to abandon him seems my life to a morality tale, in which I & Giroux), too, sends its gay narrator helplessly bound up with the trauma of could be either chaste or condemned.” abroad, and it, too, has a watchful appre- his father’s abandonment. On the other But he seems to find it hard to escape hension of its literary antecedents. Jed hand, the narrator enjoys a freedom and the morality tale. He remembers getting Goodfinch, a young, middle-class black a privilege that Mitko, who is a poor tested for H.I.V. when he was young, Chicagoan, has come to West Berlin in drifter and who seems “more or less and being given the all-clear, and feel- the early nineteen-eighties. Jed, like the homeless,” can only dream of. The asym- ing almost “disappointment. . . . Maybe German city, is full of self- conscious his- metry stains their relationship. The nar- it was just that I wanted the world to toricity. He is in search of Christopher rator begins to bridle at Mitko’s repeated have meaning, and that the meaning I Isherwood’s Berlin, of course, and also requests for money and assistance. He wanted it to have was chastisement.” in search of a distinguished, pre-made tells the Bulgarian that he doesn’t want The reader can’t help making a con- identity—“that person I so admired, the to be one of his clients. But Mitko is a nection with the narrator’s earlier story black American expatriate.” Much of the wily manipulator, motivated at times, about K., who felt ill the morning after comedy and poignancy of the picaresque perhaps, by genuine afection for the nar- the two boys first embraced. When the story has to do with Jed’s failure to rise rator, and at other moments by a dura- narrator’s father drove K. home, the car to the challenge of this rather exalted ble instinct for self-protection. He tells smelled of “foulness”—K. had thrown notion of identity. Unlike Isherwood, Jed the narrator that he is a special friend, up, and the odor still clung to him. In is not obviously a writer. Unlike his Chi- that their relationship is about more than the rearview mirror, the narrator’s father cago cousin Ruthanne, nicknamed Cello, sex; but he does so with clumsy threats, was watchful, as if he suspected some- a brilliant classical pianist who now lives pointing out that a mark of his afection thing. But the narrator felt that K. was successfully in Berlin with her wealthy is the fact that he has not stolen things turning against him, allying himself with German husband and their four chil- from him. The narrator asks him to leave. the father: “In that foul air I felt him dren, and who, while growing up in Chi- In one way or another, both literally identify me as foulness. It was as though cago, “represented Negro Achievement,” and symbolically, Mitko—the only char- he felt my father was health and I con- Jed droops with woe. A young man, he’s

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 103 already a fuck-up emeritus, a former ad- a consciousness that is missing: Jed can dict and alcoholic, fresh from rehab. In seem an amorphous witness, never quite Berlin, he is largely unsuccessful in love, present in his own sentences. The book’s squandering his afections first on a Ger- form, like its prose, is ambitious, risky, man, Manfred, who is straighter than he and takes a little getting used to. Pinck- is gay, and then on a French West Afri- ney evidently wants to enact and em- can man who leaves him for someone else. body some of the Dada-like surreality The one element of his life that spar- of West Berlin, and needs his quick jump kles, at least intermittently, is that he has cuts: “Stravinsky had three face-lifts, wangled his way into a job with West Hayden said.” Or: “Manfred pressed my Berlin’s celebrity architect and theorist, left hand flat between his hands and said the gaudily named N. I. Rosen- Montag. that I had a Balzac thing going with Pinckney’s narrator, who has tinc- cofee.” Or: “No fact ever killed of a tures of another fictional Chicago myth, they say. Cello was boiling eggs.” dreamer, Augie March, is engaged in Sentences expand, even at the cost of that great comic picaresque struggle, some strain, in order to absorb as much which is to bring the busy inside of his of Berlin as possible: “I had no trouble head into workable alignment with ob- seeing the justice of Manfred’s criticisms jective reality: “I’d lived my life camp- when we discussed Rosen-Montag over ing out in other people’s stories, waiting cigarettes by the Hansa warehouse slated for my own to begin, but unable to get to become a children’s clinic.” out of the great head and into my ac- The novel is full of wondrous tual.” He doesn’t achieve that, but his- things—several genial character por- tory forces a kind of reconciliation, for traits, funny and exact depictions of West Jed’s sojourn in West Berlin spans the Berlin (bars, hippie communes, radical nineteen-eighties, so that we begin the tyranny, bourgeois bohemianism), beau- book in a city set apart for fantasy and tiful evocations of Chicago (“I could self-projection and end it as the Wall feel Lake Michigan. You could feel all comes down, with the actual forcing its of the Great Lakes and their conspira- brutal way onto the streets. The city cies of ice crystals and surface winds”). whose main business had seemed to be Despite the gravity of Jed’s burdens and culture and partying—“the floating is- dilemmas (race, success, sanity, Amer- land of neon and pleasure deep inside ica, Germany), the book’s tone is comic, Communist territory,” “the free zone of pleasingly spry, and the prose breaks staying up all night,” a place stuck in naturally into witty one-liners: “Man- “the golden age of chain smoking”—is fred had a type: the most attractive changing, and our flailing hero must woman in the room.” Or this piece of leave to find another arena. perfected wisdom: “One of the surprises Where Greenwell rations his efects, of growing up was finding out what Pinckney scatters, cuts, digresses. The things had been about.” Jed’s charis- text frequently jumps back to Jed’s child- matic, self-involved parents—his father hood and adolescence in Chicago, moves busy running a declining black news- forward to West Berlin, and then back paper, his mother of doing charitable again to recall Jed’s parents and siblings. works—are tenderly drawn (and have Jed breaks of to muse on historical par- a stronger fictional vitality than its allels. There are frequent rifs on great watchful narrator). Chicago is a city full black figures, like Du Bois, Armstrong, of people “who could not get away.” Ber- James Brown, Ella Fitzgerald, and these lin, by contrast, belongs to those who function a little like the European mas- have just arrived, to the young. It is a ters of thought and action invoked in place where—like this novel—time can “The Adventures of Augie March,” at be manipulated, “either stretched or dis- once private goads and ironic measures counted,” because no one, or no one in of present failure. The Berlin part of Jed’s crowd, ever goes to sleep. It exists Jed’s story can seem shapeless, even in- for experiment and self-fashioning, an coherent in places, though it is never expansion and easement all the more without charm. Sometimes one has the precious to a young, gay African-Amer- sense—this is the very opposite of Green- ican who has been denied that freedom well’s novel—of a stream of conscious- at home. Even if, especially if, it is just ness without a stream. Or perhaps it is the freedom to fail. 

104 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 wasn’t the one “pinned and wriggling BOOKS on the wall”—that was Prufrock. The louche vampire who snifs his fingers and spurns the poor isn’t Frederick Sei- LUXE ET VERITAS del—even though, as we learn elsewhere, this “character” who has so little to do Frederick Seidel’s poems of age and experience. with Seidel lives in Seidel’s apartment, socializes with his friends, and shares his BY DAN CHIASSON tastes in wine, shoes, and motorcycles. In photo shoots, Seidel stands in his Upper F THE id had an id, and it wrote po- The “buttered toast” and “cunty fingers” West Side living room, dressed up like I etry, the results might sound like come courtesy of the English novelist “Frederick Seidel,” surrounded by décor “Widening Income Inequality” (Far- Henry Green, who was quoting an old whose provenance we have come to know rar, Straus & Giroux), Frederick Seidel’s butler’s musings on life’s great pleasures. from his poems. The troubling power of sixteenth collection. The title borrows There’s something predatory about both this work isn’t its distance from its au- a current meme, while also suggest- the undisclosed allusion and the “life of thor but its stifling proximity. ing Yeats’s apocalyptic poem “The Sec- privilege” it’s made to illustrate. With Every time I read Seidel, I’m bowled ond Coming” (“Turning and turning in their deeply literary brand of shock, these over by the brilliance of individual lines the widening gyre / The falcon cannot lines orchestrate a specious conflict be- and images, and baled by the narrow hear the falconer”). Seidel’s sa- culvert through which he has tanic refinement is expressed forced such an enormous and in poems at once suave and unruly gift. His style favors vengeful, their garish pleasures successive tremors of bile and linked to the many splendid animus, often crudely rhymed goods—Ducati motorcycles, so as to suggest doggerel or bespoke suits, Italian shoes— ad copy: that they describe. To encoun- ter a poem by Seidel is there- I’m looking at a video of my goddess, fore to be co-opted into his One of a library of videos of Ricardo Montalban aesthetic love I have— of creepy luxury. American Her performing for the iPad, poets like to think of their bursting out of her bodice, art as open, democratic, all- And entering my eyes with some sort of sex salve. embracing; few aside from Seidel have imagined the lyric That’s an old man looking at poem to be an exclusive haunt porn, and it makes you wish of self-flattering, hedonistic that Philip Larkin or W. H. élites. Seidel is securely on the Auden had lived to see the In- winner’s side of the widening ternet and plot his own libido wealth gap; the implication, if on its continuum of sublimity we’re reading him, is that so are and sleaze. In the stanza that we. He is the Phi Beta Kappa follows, Seidel allows his fully poet of doomsday, happily es- fledged Lothario persona to corting the world’s fortunate to take the reins: a well-appointed abyss, then In my astronomy, I lick her cunt cannonballing in alongside us. Until the nations say they can’t Whenever Seidel publishes make war no more. a book, a portion of his read- Encroaching death gives Seidel’s blasphemy a ballsy élan. Her orgasm is violunt. I get the maid to mop the oor. ers recoil in ofense, while oth- ers celebrate his courage and cunning. tween two inadequate responses. You As on many writers’ computers The dispute arises from passages like can take the bait and say, “What a jerk! (Seidel, always ready with the prod- the following: Wow—that thing about the fingers!” Or uct placement, tells us he works on a I live a life of appetite and, yes, that’s right, you can mount a kind of A.P. English MacBook Air), the blank page is one I live a life of privilege in New York, defense of them: the speaker isn’t Seidel of many overlapping windows, exist- Eating buttered toast in bed with cunty at all but a “character named Frederick ing alongside material with vastly dis- ingers on Sunday morning. Seidel,” as the critic Richard Poirier put parate moral meanings: porn, “astron- Say that again? I have a rule— it, “that has little to do with who he re- omy,” shopping, the news of “nations” I never give to beggars in the street who ally is.” Robert Browning didn’t kill Por- and “war.” As for the maid, she’s a prop hold their hands out. phyria in “Porphyria’s Lover.” T. S. Eliot designed to underscore the idea that

ILLUSTRATION BY PAUL ROGERS THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 105 this Seidel person is one despicable dude. Seidel often saves his ugliest gestures for BRIEFLY NOTED the coup de grâce.

The Portable Veblen, by Elizabeth McKenzie (Penguin Press). In OW DOES a poet end up writing this novel, a recently engaged couple in Palo Alto—a medical H these kinds of poems? Seidel began researcher, Paul, and rudderless Veblen—navigate the diicul- his career in the early sixties, the era of ties of family, new money, war, and ethical disagreement. The confessional poetry, but he had nothing book alternates between Paul’s and Veblen’s perspectives, in a way except his own perceived uncouthness to that highlights the similarities and divergences of their back- confess. He was born to a wealthy Jew- grounds. Though the novel at times recalls the scope of Jona- ish family in 1936. “I’m from St. Louis than Franzen’s family epics, it is far quirkier; Veblen becomes and Budweiser,” he writes in “The End obsessed with (and converses with) a squirrel. McKenzie is par- of Summer,” and “from the Seidel Coal ticularly good at making relationships seem real—attuned to and Coke Company,” which supplied the way that inside statements like “I can’t wait to go to Tacos fuel for Budweiser’s furnaces: Tambien as soon as you’re better” can be as meaningful as an I remember the brick alleys behind the airmation of love. massive houses. Palaces and their stables (turned into Mrs. Engels, by Gavin McCrea (Catapult). Friedrich Engels, the fa- garages) lined the outside of a long oval. ther of Communism and wealthy friend of Karl Marx, appears to At each end was a turreted guardhouse some disadvantage in this incisive novel narrated by Lizzie Burns, above the iron gates. his common-law wife. Illiterate, religious, and from a working-class These were the famous St. Louis private streets. Irish family, Burns has actually experienced the proletarian ex- At Harvard, he learned to mimic istence about which Engels can only pontificate. As she recalls “the bloated drawl of the upper class,” many scarring scenes from her former life, she teeters between as he put it in an earlier poem, “On accepting her husband’s formulations and coming to understand Wings of Song.” He was already of her past on her own terms. The novel outlines a number of radical and running: he visited Ezra Pound dislocations—in geography, nationality, class, and even love. If a at St. Elizabeths Hospital and Eliot woman cannot trust her reality, she can hardly trust her husband in London. He conducted The Paris or herself, and “is there a loneliness more lonely than mistrust?” Review’s interview with Robert Low- ell, who then helped choose his first Animals, by Emma Jane Unsworth (Europa). This inviting Brit- book, the of-puttingly titled “Final ish novel begins with a hangover: “You know how it is. Satur- Solutions,” for a prize sponsored by the day afternoon. You wake up and you can’t move.” However, in- 92nd Street Y; scandalized, the institu- stead of Bradley Cooper or Jay McInerney, we have two bright, tion refused to grant it. Seidel’s poems bantering women, Laura and Tyler. Living in a parent-funded have always found new ways to startle, apartment in Manchester at the sad end of an extended ado- learned from poets whose lives ratified lescence, they look for stimulation in a stolen jar of drugs hid- the desperation they expressed on the den in the freezer. But the narrator, Laura, acquires a sober, sta- page. He borrowed his imbalance from ble fiancé and is forced to make a choice. Perhaps, she thinks, Lowell, John Berryman, and, especially, she and Tyler carry on their shenanigans “so that peace, when Sylvia Plath, whose poems’ occasional it comes, feels like enough.” Unsworth’s story is more complex comparisons of her personal trauma than an ode to the party or a call to responsible adulthood, and to the atrocities of the Holocaust in- her characters shine with humanity. fluenced Seidel’s many blasphemous poems about the camps. He jacked up The Emperor of Water Clocks, by Yusef Komunyakaa (Farrar, the schizoid factor, substituted homicide Straus & Giroux). Komunyakaa’s fifteenth poetry collection for suicide, and, by showing how easily unfolds in a world of rich sensations, laden with mythologi- mania could be impersonated, undercut cal and Elizabethan imagery. His “Ode to the Oud” sets the the authenticity of the sufering writers songlike tone: “Gourd-shaped muse swollen / with wind in the whose ills had commanded sympathy. mulberry,” he implores it, “tell me everything you’re made of.” The confessional poets inadvertently The figures in his poems—court jesters, kings, and sailors— oozed privilege with every assertion speak in language studded with eccentricities and archaisms. of their pain. Often, just the interiors But some of the more memorable poems here are highly topi- in Lowell and Plath stole the show. If cal. “Ghazal, After Ferguson,” with its refrain of “the streets,” is you read those poems fresh from the a protest song with a lightning bolt at its center. Other poems provinces, as Seidel—and as I—first did, center on “Gaddafi’s pistol” and the “tear gas & machine-gun you would have gladly traded your san- fire” of the Arab Spring in Tunisia. They bring the ludicrous ity for Lowell’s “whole house” on Bos- extravagance of absolute power into brilliant focus. ton’s Marlborough Street.

106 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 The idea that the self doing the but deprives it of its function. What Plimpton, Mailer, Styron, Bobby Short— speaking in poems and the self it will a verbal talent this relentless do fellows, have another drink. speaks about are two distinct charac- without its target, its “owd pal Fred You had to keep drinking or you’d sink. Smoking ifty cigarettes a day made ters, indentured warily to one another, Seidel”? your squid-ink ingers stink. is not new: it can be found, in vari- Increasingly, Seidel’s poems are ous forms, in Rimbaud and Fernando about old age, its indignities described Here we have Seidel’s ubi sunt poem, Pessoa, Borges and Elizabeth Bishop, in detail worthy of an Italian giallo. He pondering where the titans go when the and many others. But Seidel comes by has had, or fears he has had, or imag- dawn breaks. But it finds an unusual the notion honestly. He grew up see- ines he has had, a stroke; he thinks angle, marvelling at the fact that more ing his last name on blue coal trucks about his prostate; his sexual perfor- of them didn’t die sooner, and wonder- circling the streets of St. Louis; this mance sufers; on one occasion (it is ing why Seidel was spared: prepared him for the uncanny expe- described in two poems) he ejacu- rience of “walking down to Eighty- lates blood and fears the worst. En- Unlucky people born with the alcoholic gene Were likely to become alcoholics. Life is second Street / To Barnes & Noble to croaching death gives some of Seidel’s mean buy my own book”—the self-estrange- blasphemy a kind of ballsy élan, as he That way, because others who drank as ment that writers feel when their own puts his mortal money where his out- much or more didn’t name is the one on the cover. rageous mouth has always been. The Succumb, but just kept on drinking—and Every poet creates a second self and horror in these poems seems real, not didn’t Do cocaine, and didn’t get fucked up, then, watching it thrive, grows to resent hyped. And Seidel’s nastiness seems, in and just didn’t! it a little. The surprise is when, as with this work, a necessary defense against Seidel, this other being is made to so fear, rather than a shock tactic that A night like this one at Elaine’s—at closely resemble the first, and then dis- has escalated as his readers’ interest any bar—is a series of potential deaths avowed as a fiction. The pitiful “old man has dwindled. It is better to be lonely successfully evaded until time runs out. at my computer pecking away, cooing than to die: this is the bracing news “Life is mean” because fate, in the form spring” is nevertheless assembling the these poems deliver. of alcoholism and addiction, rewards the voice that mocks him, “talking to him- “Widening Income Inequality” in- undeserving and condemns the worthy. self again” as he “strolls down Broadway cludes many occasional poems, as well Seidel’s elegy has some of the plastered in the rain,” or talking to “Fred Seidel,” as poems dedicated to—and mainly sweetness of a woozy toast. His rhymes who invites him to his own funeral, in intelligible to—famous friends. But it locate us temporally, punctuating lines a poem written in the kind of bubble- does have one truly moving poem, “Re- that, like the nights they describe, lack gum Yorkshire dialect that suggests a membering Elaine’s,” about the leg- an internal imperative to come to an rural ditty: endary Upper East Side hot spot. At end. Seidel’s poems often employ this An’ it wur a funeral, his best, Seidel reminds me of a poet combination of strong rhyme and loose It wur a grand funeral, who sounds nothing like him, Frank or nonexistent meter. It’s a method that Thur wur sum what laf’d o’er his grave O’Hara. Both are poets of the New non-poets use when called upon for an And sum wot danced o’er his grave, York night; both are name-droppers impromptu poem, one that can feel But I scriked me eyes out o’er grave and coterie poets. The natural drift of like a stunt. But there’s grief in it, and Of me owd pal Fred Seidel. such talents tends toward elegy, as their mortal comedy, and a covert human- This is old York grieving for New circle of interlocutors and secret-shar- ism doused in vinegar: York: the imagination, freed from the ers shrinks over time: Aldrich once protested to Elaine that his constraints of the body and history, is Many distinguished dead were there bill for the night was too high. a country bumpkin, the subject of a At one of the front tables, fragrant talk She showed him his tab was for seventeen lord or duke whose death liberates it everywhere. Scotches and he started to cry. 

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THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8 & 15, 2016 107 CARTOON CAPTION CONTEST

Each week, we provide a cartoon in need of a caption. You, the reader, submit a caption, we choose three nalists, and you vote for your favorite. Caption submissions for this week’s cartoon, by Michael Crawford, must be received by Sunday, February 14th. The nalists in the January 25th contest appear below. We will announce the winner, and the nalists in this week’s contest, in the February 29th issue. The winner receives a signed print of the cartoon. Any resident of the United States, Canada (except Quebec), Australia, the United Kingdom, or the Republic of Ireland age eighteen or over can enter or vote. To do so, and to read the complete rules, visit contest.newyorker.com.

THIS WEEK’S CONTEST

“ ” ......

THE FINALISTS THE WINNING CAPTION

“My two other wishes were ironically misinterpreted, too.” Roy Googin, New York City

“Your cheeseburger is on the loading dock.” “Marge, I think you ordered from the wrong Amazon!” Ken Buxton, Ridgewood, N.J. Andrew Josephson, Moorestown, N.J.

“You want to sell mustard? Here’s how you sell mustard!” Val Coleman, Sandiseld, Mass.